The Penguin History of Britain: The Struggle for Mastery

Nov 6, 2024 8:31 PM

Author:David Carpenter

The two-and-a-half centuries after 1066 were momentous ones in the history of Britain. In 1066, England was conquered for the last time. The Anglo-Saxon ruling class was destroyed and and the English became a subject race, dominated by a Norman-French dynasty and aristocracy. This book shows how the English domination of the kingdom was by no means a foregone conclusion.

The struggle for mastery in the book's title is in reality the struggle for different masteries within Great Britain. The book weaves together the histories of England, Scotland and Wales in a new way and argues that all three, in their different fashions, were competing for domination

Reviews

Roe is an exceptionally shrewd critic of Romanticism - uncannily alert... everything he says is well-turned and reliably clever

—— Andrew Motion , Guardian

Roe provides as complete a portrait as we are likely to get of Hunt’s first 37 years

—— Nicholas Shakespeare , Daily Telegraph

Roe offers a meticulous and thorough account of Hunt’s significance in the literary culture of the Regency era

—— Sunday Telegraph

Roe is a seasoned Romantic scholar who offers an impassioned account of Hunt's 'first life'

—— D J Taylor , Sunday Times

Roe's biography is an absorbing account of English intellectual culture in the early 19th century

—— Evening Standard

Excellent...intriguing reading...Surely [Leigh Hunt] should be back in print for us to judge him now

—— Daily Mail

Roe brings to his work decades of research on the period...[his] volume is free of imprecision and well-informed

—— Independent

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