num_pages: 352
description: History clings tight but it also kicks loose,' writes Simon Schama at the outset of At the Edge of the World?, the first book in his three-volume journey into Britain's past. And change - sometimes gentle and subtle, sometimes shocking and violent - is the dynamic of Schama's unapologetically personal and grippingly written history. At its heart lie questions of compelling importance for Britain's future as well as its what makes or breaks a nation? To whom do we give our allegiance and why? And where do the boundaries of our community lie - in our hearth and home, our village or city, tribe or faith? What is Britain - one country or many? Has British history unfolded 'at the edge of the world' or right at the heart of it? Schama delivers these themes in a form that is at once traditional and excitingly fresh. The great and the wicked are here - Becket and Thomas Cromwell, Robert the Bruce and Anne Boleyn - but so are countless more ordinary lives, depicted in Schama's brilliant portrait of the life of the British people.
language: English
title: A History of Britain 1: At the Edge of the World 3000BC-AD1603
titlecomplete: A History of Britain 1: At the Edge of the World 3000BC-AD1603
genres: Historical, Audiobook, Medieval History, History, Ancient History, Medieval, European History, World History, Nonfiction, British Literature
ratings_count: 3627
series: A History of Britain
publisher: BBC