A Short History of England - April 2024 Book Club Reading

[Falselogic]

A Short History of England was written in 1917 as a 'popular' history book. The author, G. k. Chesterton, said it was, “a history from the standpoint of a member of the public.” Most historical accounts of England, he said, were extremely “anti-popular,” that is, they ignored all the large and obvious things, “like the size of Gothic churches” and the fact that the squires in large country houses are not called abbots but their houses are called abbeys. The difference between a popular history and a scholarly history “is not about the facts but about the importance of the facts.” Chesterton maintained that legend is usually more important than history, because legend is what everyone in a village knows is important, whereas history is only what one person thinks is important. The author is also open about where his sympathies lie.

The book starts with Britain’s barbarian beginnings, then introduces the civilizing order of the Romans and the Saints before going through the Crusades and the Middle Ages, and then through the Renaissance (which he calls “The Rebellion of the Rich”), the eras of the Puritans, the Whigs, the Revolution that never happened, and finally the Return of the Barbarian. At the time of his writing, England was in the midst of WW1.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was an English writer, philosopher, Christian apologist, and literary and art critic. Chesterton created the fictional priest-detective Father Brown and wrote on apologetics. Chesterton routinely referred to himself as an orthodox Christian, and came to identify this position more and more with Catholicism, eventually converting. He died in 1936.

 

[Violentvixen]

My library didn't have this one which surprised me so found it through project gutenberg and it's now on my Kindle. My nonfiction reading usually isn't history so this'll be good for me.

 

[John]

I've liked the couple Chesterton fiction works I've read, and am curious how his non-fiction will play out.

I'm going to start reading from this scan of possibly an original printing up on Archive.org, but will probably go back to a gutenberg copy to read from the kindle app eventually.

A short history of England : Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith), 1874-1936 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

archive.org

 

[Violentvixen]

A short history of England : Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith), 1874-1936 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

archive.org

Pretty!

Gutenberg links are here if anyone else wants to go that route. Took me a couple tries to find one that loaded properly on the Kindle but did get it to work.

The book starts with Britain’s barbarian beginnings, then introduces the civilizing order of the Romans and the Saints before going through the Crusades and the Middle Ages, and then through the Renaissance (which he calls “The Rebellion of the Rich”), the eras of the Puritans, the Whigs, the Revolution that never happened, and finally the Return of the Barbarian. At the time of his writing, England was in the midst of WW1.

I haven't started the book proper yet but the chapter titles amused me. Don't think this is going to be a neutral write up!

 

[Violentvixen]

I kept trying to read this this week and kept bouncing off it pretty hard. It just reads like a self-important opinion piece. But it's been a pretty stressful week at work so I may have just not been in the right mood for this type of humor. Going to give it another shot this weekend.

 

[Falselogic]

I kept trying to read this this week and kept bouncing off it pretty hard. It just reads like a self-important opinion piece. But it's been a pretty stressful week at work so I may have just not been in the right mood for this type of humor. Going to give it another shot this weekend.

I don't know enough about Chesteron to know whether he always writes this way or if he is writing this pompously to make fun of popular histories, and their writers, which he seems to have several gripes with.

 

[Olli]

Got through with this one, it wasn't easy. It felt like a commentary on a specific tradition of English history, quite possibly the way history was taught in schools at the time. In other words, I feel like if I were a student straight out of school in ~1900, it would probably have been great to laugh along with some of the insights; now I was just barely keeping along with the implied events and people that Chesterton assumes the reader is familiar with. It's not as bad as I make it out to be; it's still a fairly cohesive whole, especially given some amount of general knowledge of European history. But if you don't know your Romans from your Saxons, you might first want to go brush up on some kind of.... brief summary of English history, which this book is not.

 

[Olli]

I don't know enough about Chesteron to know whether he always writes this way or if he is writing this pompously to make fun of popular histories, and their writers, which he seems to have several gripes with.

I've read a collection of the Father Brown stories from Chesterton and they are essentially well-written cozy crime stories, just a hundred years plus change before the current boom in the genre.

 

[Violentvixen]

I was just barely keeping along with the implied events and people that Chesterton assumes the reader is familiar with.

Yeah same. I'm bringing this along for our trip to Alaska in a couple weeks. I think being trapped with it on a plane/train is worth a shot.

 

[Falselogic]

I think I'm on the last chapter, at most second to last, and yeah, this is a lot of insider baseball. I knew a lot of it but certainly not all of it and even with some trips to Wikipedia I was still left scratching my head at times. @Olli I was curious about why you nominated this one if you don't mind sharing? Did you just enjoy his writing and was thinking this would be similar? I can't saw that I've read any of Chesterton's crimes stories.

I found the casual anti-semitism, if it at the time of writing it might have been consider enlightened, to be hard to read through and same with the casual treatment of the Irish by the English as described.

 

[Olli]

My thinking was: Chesterton was a prolific writer and is generally well-regarded, I've enjoyed the short stories I've read, a history of England sounds interesting, and even better, it's short.

 

[Falselogic]

Thanks for sharing, I was just curious! I finished the book last night. It's an interesting view of history, G.K. seems to have a real high opinion of Catholicism (makes sense he converted to it) as well as an overly rosy view of the medieval period. I'd have liked to see his primary resources for his claims that there were no homeless or hungry in England at that time due to Monasteries.

 

[Violentvixen]

Yeah same. I'm bringing this along for our trip to Alaska in a couple weeks. I think being trapped with it on a plane/train is worth a shot.

Okay, this was a Bad Idea because it meant I couldn't look anything up. I kind of skimmed the rest because I honestly wasn't engaged in it and didn't want to keep looking things up anymore.

This wasn't for me. I never understood what was happening with most of the humor because as noted it seems to be making fun of history books in the 1910s. Then the couple times something I recognized came up (Canterbury Tales was something I was excited about) it just talks about how it's taught and used in culture? I think that's my issue, you have to already know the history and then he's giving you the knowyourmeme version, but it doesn't make sense unless you know the original.

I would like to learn more about British history though, I remember bombing a redactle puzzle about some aspect of it and my spouse being surprised I didn't know the topic when it was finally unveiled. Any books anyone would recommend that are a short overview of the history of England? Even textbooks are fine, I legitimately like reading textbooks.