Full steam ahead

To write, and indeed to read, a history of considerable range, both in terms of chronology and of subject matter, is a profound challenge. The fourth volume in Peter Ackroyd’s History of England starts with the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and ends with Waterloo in 1815. It was a period that laid the foundations of the modern British state and created the basis of its prosperity, and of its status as the world’s greatest power later in the 19th century.

During the 130 years Ackroyd covers there were revolutions in attitudes too: though when he writes of the coarse humour of cartoonists such as Gillray, and the aggressive expressions of public opinion in incidents such as the Gordon Riots, one wonders whether the temper of the English people is so very different today. Indeed, one of the pleasures of reading this history is the occasional, subtle indication that Ackroyd gives, when he writes of the importance of coffee houses, the influence of the press, the decline of the Anglican church and the need to improve the road network, that the England he writes about is not a foreign country at all, however far in the past.