A book on the period of English history can never cover everything, but it does spend a lot of time on the conflict between the Stuarts and the parliament. However, these conflicts have resulted in the form of government many people in the world now have, imperfect as it may be, with checks and balances. ( )

many things I didn't know ( )

Vol. II , A history of the English-Speaking Peoples

This book covers the Tudor, Elizabeth and the rivalry with Spain. The narrative is at its best in its short formulas or parallelisms such as when Winston compares Oliver Cromwell with Napoleon Bonaparte:

When the Abbé Sieyès returned to Paris after Napoleon's expulsion of the Republican's legislature upon the 18th Brumaire, to which he was a party, he remarked to his colleagues in the Director, "Gentlement! We have a master". England-nay, England Scotland and Ireland - Had a master now; and that was all they had. But how different was his this master from the glittering adventurer of the eighteenth century! Napoleon was sure of himself. He had no scruples. He knew what he wanted to do. He intended to have supreme power in his hands, and to use that power without limit till he and his family controlled the world. He cared nothing for the past; he knew he had no means of governing the distant future; but the present was his prize and his spoil.
Cromwell, although crafty and ruthless as occasion claimed, was at all times a reluctant and apologetic dictator. He recognized and deplored the arbitrary character of his own rule, but he had no difficulty in persuading himself that his authority sprang both from Above and below. Was he not the new Moses, the chosen protector of the poeple of God, commanded to lead them into the Promised Land, if that could indeed be found? ( )

Full marks for being a history that can be read aloud. The rhetorical level aside, this is a relative rose-coloured trot through the history of Great Britain until the Glorious Revolution of 1688, beginning with the Tudor monarchy. Easy to read, but not very deep. I seem to have read it at least twice. ( )