2012 Reading - Neil Oliver, A History of Ancient Britain
Second book finished in 2012, though I actually started it before the end of 2011, as it was a Christmas present:
Neil Oliver, A History of Ancient Britain. As those of you who've been on my flist for a while will be aware, the Scottish historian/archaeologist/broadcaster Neil Oliver is well and truly up there on my Dark-Haired Celtic Geeks Lust list with the likes of Professor Brian Cox and David Tennant, so I did give a little squeal of delight when I unwrapped this particular present on Christmas Day to find him gazing at me!
Cuteness or otherwise of the author aside, though, this is a really thought-provoking read (and educational, unless Britain from the Paleolithic to the end of the Roman Empire is already your stamping-ground), based on the BBC TV series of the same name which I very much enjoyed last year. It's a roughly chronological wander through the history of Ancient Britain; it's full of anecdotes and asides, but manages to give a real sense of the breadth of the sweep of Britain's early, and largely its pre-written, history.
One of the things I love about being British is the depth of our history, the sheer length of time that this island has been continuously inhabited, in many cases by the ancestors of those who still live in the same villages and towns today (cf. Michael Wood's BBC series The Story of England, also on last year) . Oliver is really good at conveying this sense of truly deep time - back beyond even human habitation to the aeons-slow inching of geology - and yet marrying it to its significance in terms of the lives of individuals, through the artefacts they leave behind, in passages that can be truly moving:
"Our hands receive handaxes from half a million years ago as though those tools were made to fill the space left empty by all the years.
Hold up your good hand and turn the palm towards your face. Relax your fingers, watch them curl towards your palm and see how your finger-tips form a set of four steps rising upwards from little finger to index; that is how they would sit along the asymmetric ridge of a handaxe. Now turn your hand until your thumb is towards your face. Look at the empty space between your fingertips and your palm. That is the space waiting to be filled by the butt of a Palaeolithic handaxe. (People used to make things that fit.)"
If I had one quibble, it's that the book's been sloppily edited; there are typos and missing words here and there, of the sort that could easily have been in the MS as submitted but that I wouldn't really expect to find in a £20.00 hardback from Weidenfeld and Nicolson. But hey ho, it was presumably rushed out to coincide with the end of the TV series or the Christmas market...
Enjoyed this very much, though, and would recommend to anyone who enjoys getting a sense of history rooted in people and place. (Or who has a bit of a thing for cute TV historians. ;-)
[Cross-posted at both LJ and DW - feel free to comment at either...]
Neil Oliver, A History of Ancient Britain. As those of you who've been on my flist for a while will be aware, the Scottish historian/archaeologist/broadcaster Neil Oliver is well and truly up there on my Dark-Haired Celtic Geeks Lust list with the likes of Professor Brian Cox and David Tennant, so I did give a little squeal of delight when I unwrapped this particular present on Christmas Day to find him gazing at me!
Cuteness or otherwise of the author aside, though, this is a really thought-provoking read (and educational, unless Britain from the Paleolithic to the end of the Roman Empire is already your stamping-ground), based on the BBC TV series of the same name which I very much enjoyed last year. It's a roughly chronological wander through the history of Ancient Britain; it's full of anecdotes and asides, but manages to give a real sense of the breadth of the sweep of Britain's early, and largely its pre-written, history.
One of the things I love about being British is the depth of our history, the sheer length of time that this island has been continuously inhabited, in many cases by the ancestors of those who still live in the same villages and towns today (cf. Michael Wood's BBC series The Story of England, also on last year) . Oliver is really good at conveying this sense of truly deep time - back beyond even human habitation to the aeons-slow inching of geology - and yet marrying it to its significance in terms of the lives of individuals, through the artefacts they leave behind, in passages that can be truly moving:
"Our hands receive handaxes from half a million years ago as though those tools were made to fill the space left empty by all the years.
Hold up your good hand and turn the palm towards your face. Relax your fingers, watch them curl towards your palm and see how your finger-tips form a set of four steps rising upwards from little finger to index; that is how they would sit along the asymmetric ridge of a handaxe. Now turn your hand until your thumb is towards your face. Look at the empty space between your fingertips and your palm. That is the space waiting to be filled by the butt of a Palaeolithic handaxe. (People used to make things that fit.)"
If I had one quibble, it's that the book's been sloppily edited; there are typos and missing words here and there, of the sort that could easily have been in the MS as submitted but that I wouldn't really expect to find in a £20.00 hardback from Weidenfeld and Nicolson. But hey ho, it was presumably rushed out to coincide with the end of the TV series or the Christmas market...
Enjoyed this very much, though, and would recommend to anyone who enjoys getting a sense of history rooted in people and place. (Or who has a bit of a thing for cute TV historians. ;-)
[Cross-posted at both LJ and DW - feel free to comment at either...]