Book Review: Seven Ages of Britain by David Dimbleby

I like to take the long view with genealogy and think about the lives my ancestors would have lived. While I'll probably never be able to find ancestors even 500 years back, the fact that I'm here, writing this, means that I do have ancestors not just 500 years but all the way back to the origins of Homo sapiens.

While this book doesn't go that far back, starting proper at the invasion of the Romans who gave us the name Britain, it goes far enough back to set the mind wandering.

The focus of this book, and the television series it accompanies, is the past 2000 years of history of Britain through its artefacts and art.

I'm not a big fan of art; I'm the sort of person who likes what he likes and rarely ventures further. We have artwork on our walls, but I couldn't tell you the style - apart from the Monet of course, which is impressionism and is a topic I covered for my GCSE Art. This probably gives you a good impression of the art I like! However, the book and television series were insightful and helped me understand the impact of art on the people of Britain through the ages.

The television series relies on the sense of humour and the impact of the art upon David Dimbleby, but the book wasn't written by his, so how did it fare? I was very impressed with the book, each chapter covers an age and is written by an expert.

About a third of the art in the book is different to that shown in the television series and the book delves deeper. This provides a better understanding not only of the artists, or subjects of the art, but of the people of the age. Some of the artwork is unlikely to have been seen by our ancestors, but a lot of the art is about them - just ordinary people living through history, being impacted by it whether they liked it or not; whether they understood it or not.

Of course, being a fairly short book and being restricted to art, large chunks of history are missing. But there are plenty of books that deal with continuous history of Britain.

While you're unlikely to find your ancestors referenced in the book, the last four chapters are from the 1600s onwards and therefore in the realm of many people's family tree. It's nice to get this view of their world, especially seeing the art of satirists such as James Gillray in the 18 century. To him, everyone was fair game - so it's nice to wonder if our ancestors were becoming less restricted in their thoughts, after centuries of restrictions via religion and feudalism - possibly having a giggle at Gillray's creations and eagerly awaiting the next one. 

I enjoyed reading this book and advise anyone interested in family history, or just history in general, to have a read - I expect there will be few libraries that don't have a copy as the television series was quite a success.