Britain Before Rome

Introduction to our year studying the history of England.

Paleolithic and Neolithic Britain

Stonehenge 3000 BC

Skara Brae (Scotland, Orkney Islands)

THE FIRST INVASION: Celts

THE SECOND INVASION: Romans

THE THIRD INVASION: Anglo-Saxons

THE FOURTH INVASION: Danes

THE FIFTH INVASION: Normans

REQUIRED READING:

No required reading for our first week.

RECOMMENDED READING:

1) This is the best one-volume treatment of all of British history. The price for a new paperback is now $58.00, which is too much for our class. So I recommend that you buy a used HARDCOVER. If you check the prices you will find good ones starting at about $10.00 which is a great deal. There are about 50 copies right now so that means that anyone in our class who wants a copy will be able to own one. This is a general background book for the whole year.

Norman Davies,

The Isles: A History,

Oxford University Press; 1 edition (March 2, 2000),

ISBN 0195134427

There are many good used hardcover copies.

Peter Ackroyd,

Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination,

Anchor,

ISBN 0385497733

We devote the first ten weeks of our year-long study of England to the origins of the English people: the Celts, the Romans, and the Christians. Julius Caesar, Saint Patrick, and King Arthur are some of the figures who dominate this first quarter. We end the quarter with Chaucer whose life and career give us an excellent vision of England in 1400.

The ten weeks of the Winter Quarter of "History of England" are dominated by the Tudor family. From the moment that Henry Tudor (1457-1509) triumphed on the battlefield at Bosworth Field on August 22, 1485, the story of early modern England became fatefully married to the story of the Tudors: Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I.

The Spring Quarter of "History of England" is devoted to the seventeenth century and the story of the Stuarts. The Scotish royal family, the Stuarts, also carried English royal blood descended from Henry VIII's sister Margaret. In the later years of the reign of Elizabeth, it was generally acknowledged that the legal heir to Elizabeth was her Scottish cousin James. Now in 1603, in the absence of all other legitimate Tudor heirs, James was called to England to succeed Elizabeth I.

Week 1

REQUIRED READING:

RECOMMENDED READING: