Revolution

The History of England, Book 4

De: Peter Ackroyd

Narrado por: Derek Perkins

In Revolution, Peter Ackroyd takes listeners from William of Orange's accession following the Glorious Revolution to the Regency, when the flamboyant Prince of Wales ruled in the stead of his mad father, George III, and England was - again - at war with France, a war that would end with the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo.

Late Stuart and Georgian England marked the creation of the great pillars of the English state. The Bank of England was founded, as was the stock exchange; the Church of England was fully established as the guardian of the spiritual life of the nation, and Parliament became the sovereign body of the nation with responsibilities and duties far beyond those of the monarch. It was a revolutionary era in English letters, too, a time in which newspapers first flourished and the English novel was born. It was an era in which coffeehouses and playhouses boomed, gin flowed freely, and in which shops, as we know them today, began to proliferate in towns and villages. But it was also a time of extraordinary and unprecedented technological innovation, which saw England utterly and irrevocably transformed from a country of blue skies and farmland to one of soot and steel and coal.

©2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc. (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Great history of the long 18th Century

This volume covers the period from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 through the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815. It has all the verve and wit of the others in the series, but the reader is much better than in the previous three volumes. If you stuck with the series for vol’s 1-3, you’ll be very pleasantly surprised by the change in reader for this one.

One big problem…

There was just one thing the author said that upset me so much, I kept thinking about it, which spoiled much of the listening experience.
Speaking of the Industrial Revolution, I wondered when he would get to the problems women workers faced.
He eventually got to it — describing the sex demanded of the women by their bosses as creating, essentially, a brothel.
This imagines that the women a) were participants with any level of willingness, and b) that they were recompensed somehow.
I was infuriated at the ignorance and chauvinism. If a woman had written this, she never would have made such a statement.
It was also troubling that he took so much time to speak of the supposed positives of the situation for workers at that time.
And while we’re at it, stating that the one company owner who kept his child workers well fed and cared for, yet they still had short lives and hunched figures, meant that it hadn’t mattered what he’d done. So you might as well starve and beat them…?
That one section…the author really needs some sensitivity training.

several great parts, but some not so

I have enjoyed all the books in this series. and the information on the Stuart's was great. very detailed and I learned a lot. not yet having read a great deal on them but knew a lot about them. so I sucked that up. but after that.. about william of orange and queen Anne time.. the book stops detailed account of the monarchy and seemed to obsess with only the industrialization of england . I would have preferred a better balance. I actually got very board towards that end and thought of not finishing it cause he droned on for ever about industrialization and nothing else. still a good author and good book

Very Indwpth

Another great instalment in the series. A bit heavy on the theatre history but very good read.

Masterful storytelling.

A very enjoyable listen with chapters interweaving cultural, religious and political histories of England in the 1700s

The history was interesting the lectures in pity were not.

I liked the history of the government, kings, and wars. I could do less with the tangents about authors and books written during
that time period, there were a lot of those side bars that I did not find interesting.
The reader was great.