Book Review: Seven Ages of Britain by Justin Pollard

This is an important book for me because it's the first history book I read because I chose to. I was never interested in history, I wasn't keen on the way it was presented in school and didn't choose it as a GCSE subject. I think what changed for me was that I became interested in history the year I met my wife, Lucy. I lived in North Lincolnshire where not a lot has happened, but Lucy lived in Wiltshire, where things have been happening that are nationally and internationally important for thousands of years.

So, when I saw the television series featured a fair bit of history around Wiltshire, I started watching it. Since then, I've been interested in history and pre-history and because this book focuses on 'ordinary' people; I think it was a precursor to my initial interest in family history.


This book is a great introduction to the history of the British Isles from 'the ice age to the industrial revolution'. It's too short (paperback 316 pages) to be anything but an introduction. The selling point of the book is that it focuses on the normal people that don't often make history, but still had to live with it and the consequences. However, while I agree that the book does focus on normal people, living normal everyday lives, I disagree that they didn't make history. If they didn't, then this would be an even shorter book!

The stories told have been well chosen and the normal people made history in their own ways everyday. Whether it was the peasants revolt, or the beginning of mining, or even the invention of flint tools - it wasn't kings and queens that started these things. It was normal people just looking for a way to slightly improve their lives.  This improvement in the early days tended to be slightly changing the environment, from using wood from trees to make semi-permanent houses all the way to later times with cutting down vast tracts of woodland over generations to enable full-scale farming to develop.

I read this book for the first time in 2007 and have recently finished reading it for the second time. I've found it to be a really readable book and if anything it provides enough information to allow the reader to either be happy with what they now know, or to go and research each topic in further detail.

Now that I have an interest in family history, I re-read this will different things in mind - these weren't just ordinary people, these are our ancestors. So the down to earth nature of the book helped me see my ancestors in a different light - even though I haven't reach that far back with my tree as yet.

As I say, it's an introductory text, but it's not just for newcomers to history, but will perhaps provide a different viewpoint for people that have been deeply into our British history for years.

Note: Adapted from a review I originally posted on my other blog Notes of Nature.