Heaven’s Command

We don’t want to fight, but by jingo if we do, We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too! INNOCENTS ABROAD! This is history told through a patchwork of breezy anecdotes — that might not even fit together well enough, but still achieves the objective remarkably well. The na......more

Heaven's Command is 'History of the British Empire as Saucy Anecdote' and I loved it. I'm in the middle of a major downsizing in my house and it made the housework much more enjoyable to be listening along to this audiobook, which reads like an adventure story. There is a bit of theorizing in the op......more

This book is about the British Empire during Queen Victoria’s 63-year reign (1819- 1901). Useful bits Jan put in this book: “in 1837 it still took three days to travel from London to Ireland.” It took three months to get to Bombay and eight months to Sydney. In those days, Malaria was “often” treate......more

Ripping Yarns This is a somewhat difficult book to assess. It is a book started shortly after the collapse of the British Empire (here defined as the Suez Crisis of 1956) written with hindsight from the narrow perspective of an idealistic and relatively liberal English subject. While ambivalent in ma......more

This was fantastic! Never dull, and the author made connections between historical personalities, movements, etc. that I hadn't seen before. I can hardly wait to get the next in the series!......more