تاریخ فشرده انگلستان by James Hawes

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I started reading this book just before immigrating to the UK to get a better understanding. I’ve now been in the UK for 6 months during this 28th year of mine, and this coincides with the 2024 election, where the Labour Party won by a safe margin. That night, my old friend and I had a toast with fine Scotch on the rocks. That night, and also during these 6 months, I felt like I should devote some time to learn more about the country I’ll be living in for the next year. So, I began.

As you can tell from the cover, it’s an MP3 book that covers history from the very beginning to the COVID pandemic in just 300 pages. So, don’t have high expectations for it. It’s just a starter book to help you get familiar with the general events and key terms from the last 2000 years of history, wars, and major shifts. You’ll get a rough sense of the big game-changing events, key dates, and important figures.

However, the biggest flaw of this book is that it sometimes overemphasizes certain points while neglecting many others, and it doesn’t do so in a very coherent way. On top of that, I read the Persian translation, which wasn’t the best. Since it translates English names without often providing the originals, it can be hard to stay engaged with the text.

Now that I’ve read this and gotten the gist of it, I’d be more than happy to hear your recommendations for a better, perhaps more focused book on British history, especially around the Industrial Revolution.



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