Catholic Herald Michael Duggan: At my elbow, as I write, is a small tower of books, all volumes of English history, stacked up in order of age. At the top of the pile are the three published most recently: from 2011, the first volume of Peter Ackroyd’s History of England; then Daniel Hannan’s How We Invented Freedom and Why It Matters from 2013; and finally Robert Tomb’s The English and Their History (2015). Each in its turn has been lavished with publicity and praise. The Tombs volume, for example, was described by reviewers as ‘definitive’ and ‘magisterial’, the new standard work. Read full article here.
