All are brought to life through the narrative mastery of one of Britain's finest writers. But he also gives us a vivid sense of how England's early people lived: the homes they built, the clothes they wore, the food they ate, even the jokes they told. With his extraordinary skill for evoking time and place and his acute eye for the telling detail, Ackroyd recounts the story of warring kings, of civil strife, and foreign wars. He describes the successive waves of invaders who made England English, despite being themselves Roman, Viking, Saxon, or Norman French. He guides us from the building of Stonehenge to the founding of the two great glories of medieval England: common law and the cathedrals. He takes us from the primeval forests of England's prehistory to the death, in 1509, of the first Tudor king, Henry VII.

In Foundation, acclaimed historian Peter Ackroyd tells the epic story of England itself.

Peter Ackroyd is arguably the most talented and prolific writer working in Britain today.' - Daily Express (UK) Although the storytelling is witty, provocative, and highly readable, the history is flawed-too many years are stuffed into one volume to be truly satisfying, and Ackroyd’s repeated claims about deep continuity often feel forced, such as linking the Kentish uprising against Richard III to a modern-day Kentish miners’ strike as a sign of the people’s fierce independence. Peter Ackroyd’s Foundation is a book that will both educate and entertain the reader. The first Plantagenet king, Henry II, imposed a system of national justice and destroyed Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas à Becket King John was forced to guarantee his barons’ rights through the Magna Carta and Edward I established the Parliament, but brutalized Scots and Jews. Ackroyd’s parade of monarchs includes mostly ruthless abusers of England’s resources, while the author also outlines gradual steps toward democracy.

when England was continually colonized and exploited by foreigners, including various Germanic tribes such as the Angles and Saxons, Vikings, and Normans. Beginning with the earliest archeological remains dating to 900,000 years ago, Ackroyd continues from the first to the 13th centuries. This first in a projected six-volume history by über-prolific novelist and literary biographer Ackroyd (London: The Biography) starts with the Stone Age, devotes most of its pages to the Middle Ages, and ends with the death of the first Tudor king, Henry VII, in 1509.

Peter ackroyd foundation review