I missed at least one (and I’m sure many more) book in the batch I posted about last weekend, but that turned out to be a good thing since The Daily Mail has been publishing articles based on the book this week (compete with sensationalist headlines!). This book is out this week in the UK and in October in the US (I’ve put the ordering links for both below, although the US one may not be useful at the moment).
I am in the process of reading The Elizabethans, which I find much less incisive and well-researched than A.N. Wilson’s earlier book The Victorians. He is pretty self-indulgent about drawing idiosyncratic comparisons with our own era, and also makes some very eccentric and sometimes self-contradictory observations – e.g. his contention that women were never ass powerful again after Elizabeth until the era of Margaret Thatcher (when a few paragraphs before he had marvelled at the power of Queen Victoria). There are also sloppy historical inaccuracies: for example, Wakefield was not a ‘tiny village’ during Elizabeth’s reign, but a powerful city that had prospered increasingly during the Middle Ages because of the wool trade. He should know this because of the Wakefield 32-strong Miracle Play Cycle, if nothing else. Wakefield in fact began its decline during the rise of the industrial era, it did not start to grow then. When I spot mistakes like this, it makes me uneasy about the accurcy of the rest of the book.
I just finished The Elizabethans and was impressed with the authors warm style and thoughtful approach to his subject. He wisely starts with “The Difficulty” modern readers have understanding, and not judging, the totally different values of the Elizabethans (ie: Ireland, the slave trade, bear baiting).
While mainly chronological, the book is not overly-structured; Wilson has a natural conversational style and some surprising gems pop-up unexpectedly.
I most enjoyed the generous space devoted to literature and the stage. It inspires me to re-read Spencer’s The Fairy Queen again.
The only inaccuracy I detected was his assertion that the Gilbert’s discovered the Northwest Passage – not so.