The authorised version

The first volume of Peter Ackroyd’s six-volume history of England took us from prehistory to the death of Henry VII. Now the great charabanc rattles on. Here is a fat book of old-fashioned, great-man history taking in the second of the Harries twain, Ned the Lad, Mary and Bessie.

Things don’t begin well; the speed at which Ackroyd is producing this material is perhaps starting to show. ‘The land was flowing with milk and honey,’ Ackroyd tells us. Whatever the condition of the land, its chronicler is flowing with campness and cliché: we get ‘the sun in its splendour’, ‘the power and the glory’, ‘a new golden age’, ‘a question of honour’, ‘stiffen the sinews and summon up the blood’, and ‘the sport of kings’ by the time we’ve reached the foot of page three.

That soon calms down, and Ackroyd hits cruising speed, churning out short, telegraphic sentences in the active voice. There’s the slight feel, I don’t know whether intentional, of his borrowing a style from the Anglo-Saxon chroniclers, next to whom he seems to position himself as heir. To take a chunk more or less at random:

From this time forward, in fact, [Henry VIII] no longer employed one pre-eminent minister. The years of Wolsey and of Cromwell were over. Now the king decided to supervise the affairs of the realm. He described himself as ‘old’, but he was not too old to control the business of the council or to read the dispatches of his ambassadors. The king’s council was established upon a more formal basis; it had a membership of approximately 19 peers or prelates, and met each day at court. A minute book was to be kept.