This Sceptred Isle: Collection 1: 55BC – 1702: The Classic BBC Radio History by Christopher Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was a delightful history, a lot more complex than I would have expected from my first impressions. There were some good inconsistencies that get promoted quite often (such as “The Unready”) which this series also delightfully corrected. Furthermore, the show included a number of illustrative stories of the time (such as the dialogue between Edward I and Roger Bigod on each others’ rights).
If I wanted to pick a fight with this, it would be that Collection 2 includes (will include — haven’t started it yet!) two-hundred years to this one’s 1750 years while being of similar lengths. That is understandable and explainable in this as our sources for the 1st millennium are pretty bland. And, from those, this collection has taken a very decent overview though of course say Anglo-Saxon literature could have been mentioned in more detail.
