Here is a stupendous achievement: a narrative history of England which is both thorough and arresting. Very few writers could pull it off. Either they’d have an axe to grind, or they’d lose perspective, or they’d present a series of anecdotes, or they’d end up in a Casaubonish pursuit of other historians’ errors. In fact, to get it right, you’d ideally be a mature and accomplished author, steeped in the facts, who was nonetheless tackling English history for the first time.
Which is more or less what Robert Tombs, a professor of French history at Cambridge, is. ‘A writer of history ought, in his writings, to be a foreigner, without country, living under his own law only,’ claimed Thomas Hobbes, adapting Lucian. If you’ve read any modern French history in English, the chances are you’ll have come across Tombs. This book, though, will be remembered as his magnum opus.
The English and their History is about as long as a single volume can be; yet it couldn’t really be any shorter. To be honest, like many reviewers on a deadline, I had planned to skip bits of it; but found myself gripped by the narrative. Nothing important is omitted, there are no howlers, and yet plenty of myths are gently corrected — especially those surrounding the first world war. ‘A few lines of Wilfred Owen outweigh a shelf of monographs,’ as the author drily notes.
Tombs plays a straight bat. He isn’t trying to make his name with a clever-dick new thesis. Rather, he draws on the latest research to give us something close to a comprehensive picture. The civil war was neither a social revolution nor a Whig triumph, but an avoidable breakdown (an analysis which reflects the current scholarly consensus, and which is remarkably close to David Hume’s take in the 18th century).
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in