A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Four Volume Set by Winston Spencer Churchill

The Birth of Britain

The Birth of Britain is the first volume of A History of the English Speaking Peoples, the immensely popular and eminently readable four-volume work by Winston Churchill.

A rousing account of the early history of Britain, the work describes the great men and women of the past and their impact on the development of the legal and political institutions of the English.

Indeed, Churchill celebrates the creation of the constitutional monarchy and parliamentary system and the kings, queens, and leading nobles who helped create English democracy.

The narrative commences 55 years before the birth of Christ,
when Julius Caesar famously 'turned his gaze upon Britain' and concludes with the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. Along the way we encounter a plethora of closely observed characters, all of whom breathe life into the page: William the Conqueror, Alfred the Great, Richard the Lionheart, Joan of Arc. The beginnings of Parliament, the Church and the monarchy are all analysed alongside this

comprehensive chronology.

THE ISLAND RACE Britannia; Subjugation; Roman Province; Lost Island; England; Vikings; Alfred the Great; Saxon Dusk THE MAKING OF THE NATION Norman Invasion; William the Conqueror; Growth amid Turmoil; Henry Plantagenet; English Common Law; Coeur de Lion; Magna Carta; On the Anvil; Mother of Parliaments; Edward I; Bannockburn; Scotland & Ireland; Long-Bow; Black Death THE END OF THE FEUDAL AGE King Richard II and the Social Revolt; Usurpation of Henry Bolingbroke; Empire of Henry V; Joan of Arc; York and Lancaster; Wars of the Roses; Adventures of Edward IV; Richard III.

 

The New World

In Volume 2 of Winston Churchill’s epic four-volume account of British history, he details the turbulent period of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—taking us from the dramatic clashes of the powerful Tudor and Stuart families through the growth of monarchic power, the Protestant Reformation, England’s Civil War, and the discovery of the Americas.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries England underwent a startling series of transformations.

The turbulent reigns of the Tudors and Stuarts witnessed the Protestant Reformation, the growth of powerful monarchies, the English Civil War, and the colonization of the new world.

In this, the second volume of his History of the English Speaking Peoples, Sir Winston Churchill turned his considerable rhetorical and analytical acumen to weaving a compelling and insightful narrative of these formative centuries.

The Age of Revolution

During the long period of 1688 to 1815, three revolutions took place and all led to war between the British and the French. The English Revolution of 1688 made a new enemy of an old foe; the American Revolution of 1775 saw the United States finally declare independence; and the French Revolution of 1789 reverbera.

Beginning with Marlborough's victory at Blenheim in 1704 and ending with Wellington's defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, Churchill recounts Britain's rise to world leadership over the course of the eighteenth century. In this volume Churchill provides an excellent illustration of his unique literary voice, together with an introduction to his thoughts on the forces that shape human affairs.

The Great Democracies

The fourth of Churchill’s grandly ambitious four-volume A History of the English-Speaking Peoples begins with the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars—and ends with the Boer War of 1902. In it, Churchill makes an impassioned argument for the crucial role played by the English-speaking people in exporting not just economic benefits, but political freedom.

The Bishop's House was a comfortable, double dwelling of a smooth, bright red brick and large, plate-glass windows, situated in a plot at the western end of Waverley Place. It had been bought by the Diocese in the nineties, and was representative of that transitional period in American architecture when the mansard roof had been repudiated, when as yet no definite types had emerged to take its place. The house had pointed gables, and a tiny and utterly useless porch that served only to darken the front door, made of heavy pieces of wood fantastically curved. It was precisely ten o'clock in the morning when Hodder rang the bell and was shown into the ample study which he had entered on other and less vital occasions. He found difficulty in realizing that this pleasant room, lined with well-worn books and overlooking a back lawn where the clothes of the episcopal family hung in the yellow autumn sun, was to be his judgment seat, whence he might be committed to trial for heresy.

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