March 14, 2005
Acclaimed historian Lacey's second volume on English history opens in 1348, the year of the Black Plague, which wiped out half of England's five million people, and proceeds through the astonishing scientific discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton in 1687. Along the way, we meet characters as diverse as Chaucer, Richard II, Henry IV, William Caxton, Guy Fawkes, Richard Whittington, Lady Jane Grey and Titus Oates. In lively vignettes, Lacey (The Year 1000
; Majesty
) also regales us with such events as the Puritan civil war, the London fire of 1666 and Sir Walter Raleigh's voyages to the New World. Political and religious dissent dominate these tales. Lacey captures the humor inherent in the evolution of England's history; thus, he includes the story of the first modern water closet, invented by Queen Elizabeth's godson, Sir John Harrington. In addition, Lacey briefly chronicles the British attraction to the rare and the exotic in the tale of John Tradescant's opening to the public in the 1630s of his collection of artifacts and curiosities—England's "first museum." Lacey's animated prose, energetic storytelling and spirited approach to British history bring the past to life. 51 b&w illus., 2 maps.
October 16, 2006
The third volume in Lacey's series of edifying and entertaining stories from English history abounds in fascinating profiles. Industrial and agricultural pioneers such as Jethro Tull, James Hargreaves and Isambard Kingdom Brunel abide alongside human rights protestors such as Thomas Clarkson, who founded the British antislavery movement; feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft; and journalist Annie Besant, who initiated a successful 1888 match girls' strike. Lacey wittily summarizes the careers of various military giants of the British Empire including the duke of Marlborough and the mutiny-prone Captain Bligh, and treats the royal Hanover line with similar irreverence, beginning with the German import George I before describing, with modern medical hindsight, the "madness" of King George III and chronicling the teenage Queen Victoria's ascension to the throne in 1837. Meanwhile, Lacey draws attention to overlooked historical figures, such as the mixed-race Jamaican-born Crimean Wars nurse Mary Seacole, the Dorset fossil excavator and would-be geologist Mary Anning and Walter Sellar and Robert Yeatman, creators of the 1930 satirical history classic 1066 and All That.
Lacey's slyly oblique narratives will please history lovers of all ages. 60 b&w illus.