History, society and politics
Art, architecture and archeology
Literature classics
Twentieth-century works
Anthologies
Travel and journals
(Penguin). Classic travelogue, opening a window onto Britain
in the 1720s.
(Penguin). Good
overall account of Cornwall from an author who lived most of her life
there.
(UK
Fontana). Excellent, offbeat selection of writings, ranging from the
celebratory to the caustic.
(o/p). Snapshots of
English life in the 1920s.
(Unwin/University of California). Pepys kept a
voluminous diary from 1660 until 1669, recording the fall of the Commonwealth,
the Restoration, the Great Plague and the Great Fire, as well as describing the
daily life of the nation's capital. The unabridged version is published in
eleven weighty tomes; Penguin's version is abridged; Unwin's is made up of just
the choicest extracts.
(o/p). Account of
Bradford-born author's travels around England in the 1930s.
(Picador/Penguin). Trip
around the coast of England, with the occasional trip ashore in order to make
supercilious remarks about the locals.
(Penguin/G.K.
Hall). Thoroughly bad-tempered critique of a depressed and drizzly nation.
(Penguin).
Masterpiece of nature writing, observing the seasons in a Hampshire village.
(OUP). Engaging diaries
of Willy's sister, with whom he shared Dove Cottage in the Lake District.
(Penguin). First-ever English history, written in
seventh-century Northumbria.
(Penguin).
Immensely accessible overview of English life from Roman times to the 1980s.
(Penguin). Portrait of life in England's hellish industrial towns,
written in 1844 when Engels was only 24.
(Penguin).
Fascinating documentation of day-to-day existence with the landed gentry;
packed with the sort of facts that get left out by tour guides.
(Lawrence & Wishart/Humanities). A collection
of essays on the impact of Thatcherism by leading left-wing academics of the
1980s.
(Thames
& Hudson). Whistle-stop tour, enlivened by good illustrations, photos and
maps.
(Penguin).
Britain's foremost Marxist historian, Hill is without doubt the most
interesting writer on the Civil War and Commonwealth period.
(Penguin). Absorbing account of the changing English countryside from
pre-Roman times to the present day.
(Penguin).
Fairly readable social history, taking you up to the late 1980s.
(Pluto/Westview). An uncompromising account of the last 300 years of
women's oppression in Britain.
(Cambridge
University Press). Straightforward political history from 1707 to 1975.
(UK Oxford
University Press). Thought-provoking survey from Britain's finest populist
historian.
(Penguin). A seminal text - essential reading for anyone who wants to
understand the fabric of British society.
(Penguin). A
"history of people with the politics left out" in Trevelyan's own words -
liberal social history from Chaucer to 1901.
(Macmillan/St Martin). More than 1000 pages of concisely presented and
well-illustrated information on London past and present - the most fascinating
single book on the capital
(UK Penguin). Excellent socio-cultural-botanical history, making the
best introduction to the subject.
(Cambridge University Press). Beautiful black-and-white aerial photos
illustrate this geographical overview of Britain from Roman times to the
aftermath of the Blitz.
(UK
Deutsch). Refreshingly opinionated and lushly illustrated survey of some of
England's finest buildings.
(UK
Batsford). Useful introductory history from Stone Age caves to early medieval
settlements.
(UK Michael Joseph). Straightforward illustrated A-Z of terms and
styles.
(UK Blandford).
Excellent on the social background and the structural evolution of England's
1700 medieval castles.
(Penguin).
Wide-ranging romp through English art concentrating on Hogarth, Reynolds, Blake
and Constable, including a section on the Perpendicular style and landscape
gardening.
(Penguin). Magisterial series, at least one volume per county, covering
just about every inhabitable structure in the country. This project was
initially a one-man show, but later authors have revised Pevsner's text,
inserting newer buildings but generally respecting the founder's personal
tone.
(British Museum/University of California). Generously illustrated account
of Roman occupation written by the British Museums's own curators.
(UK
Faber). Photo-packed, enthusiastic discussion of English domestic architecture,
with a chapter covering each type of material used.
(Thames & Hudson).
From pre-Conquest to Brutalism with black and white photos.
(Penguin).
England's most famous man of letters has his engagingly low-life Scottish
biographer, thirty years his junior, to thank for the longevity of his
reputation.
(Penguin).
The ultimate bodice-ripper, complete with volcanic passions, craggy
landscapes, ghostly presences and gloomy Calvinist villagers.
(Penguin). Not so many
bodices ripped, though still plenty of Clavinism in this quietly feminist story
of a much put-upon governess.
(Penguin). Blackmore's
swashbuckling, melodramatic romance, set on Exmoor, has done more for West
Country tourism than anything else since.
(Penguin). Simple,
allegorical tale of hero Christian's struggle to achieve salvation; a staple
read for the masses until the onset of agnosticism this century.
(Penguin). Popular
Edwardian novel debunking orthodox Victorian pieties, partly set in
Nottinghamshire.
(Penguin).
Fourteenth-century collection of bawdy verse tales told during a pilgrimage to
Becket's shrine at Canterbury, translated into modern English blank verse.
(Penguin). An
account of the Great Plague seen through the eyes of an East End saddler,
written some sixty years after the event.
(Penguin). Mock-epic comic
novel detailing the exploits of its lusty orphan-hero, set in Somerset and
London.
(Penguin).
Light-hearted accident-prone paddle on the River Thames.
(Oxford University
Press). Nine stories about a mischievous trio of schoolboys, drawn from
Kipling's experiences of public school in Devon.
(Penguin, 2
vols). Fifteenth-century tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the
Round Table, written while the author was in London's Newgate Prison.
(Penguin). Tripping out with the most famous literary drug-taker after
Coleridge - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas it isn't, but neither is this
a simple cautionary tale.
(HarperCollins/Doubleday). The entire output at a bargain price. For
individual plays, you can't beat the Arden Shakespeare series
(Routledge), each volume containing illuminating notes and good introductory
essays.
(Penguin). Anarchic,
picaresque eighteenth-century ramblings based on life in a small English
village, and full of bizarre textual devices - like an all-black page in
mourning for one of the characters.
(Penguin). A
sceptical but compassionate overview of English capitalist society by one of
the leading realists of the mid-nineteenth century.
(Penguin). The
"Barsetshire" novels, of which Barchester Towers is the best known, are
set in and around a fictional version of Salisbury. John Major's favourite
author.
(Oxford University
Press). Light-hearted seventeenth-century fishing guide set on London's River
Lea, sprinkled with poems and songs, which has gone through more reprints than
any other book in the English language.
(Penguin). A
typical Ackroyd novel, constructing parallels between interwar London and
distant epochs to conjure a kaleidoscopic vision of English culture. His other
novels, such as Chatterton, Hawksmoor and The House of Doctor
Dee, are variations on his preoccupation with the English psyche's darker
depths.
(Penguin). Difficult to
believe that an establishment figure like Amis was once one of the "Angry Young
Men" of the 1950s. Lucky Jim, the novel that made him famous, is
hilariously funny in the opinion of many.
(Penguin). "Ferociously
witty, scabrously scatological and balefully satirical" observation of low-life
London, or pretentious drivel from literary London's favourite bad boy,
depending on your viewpoint.
(Penguin). Spy story
based on the 1906 Anarchist bombing of Greenwich Observatory, exposing the
hypocrisies of both the police and Anarchists.
(Penguin). Ford's tetralogy,
one of the great unread masterpieces of English literature, is an unsurpassed
evocation of the passing of old Tory England in the aftermath of World War
I.
(Penguin). Bourgeois angst
in Hertfordshire and Shropshire; the best book by one the country's best-loved
modern novelists.
(Penguin). Merciless
parody of primitivist rural fiction of the type popularized by the likes of
Mary Webb.
(Faber/Penguin).
Atmospheric novel centred on the building of a cathedral spire, taking place in
a thinly disguised medieval Salisbury.
(Penguin). Horrific
and humorous memoirs of public school and World War I trenches, followed by
post-war trauma and life in Wales, Oxford and Egypt.
(Dover). Collection
of bucolic and love poems, popular for their lyrical gloom and idealized vision
of the English countryside.
(Penguin). Reminiscences
of adolescent bucolic frolics in the Cotswolds during the 1920s.
(Black Swann 1994)
This wonderful first novel tells the story of life beneath the blazing sun in a small rural village in England during the devastating drought of 1984. The long, absorbing
plot unfolds through the eyes of Allison, the youngest child of the Freemantle family. Allison lives with her parents, siblings, and grandparents on the family farm, and
as the long, blistering summer passes, she weaves a tale about the lives of past, present, and future members of her family and village. By the end of the narrative
and the approach of the first rain in many months, Allison's family has been changed forever, each character undergoing a transformation of sorts, ensuring life will
never be the same. Pears' gentle and consistently surprising writing style masterfully evokes the parched summer and brings to life the introspective narrator as well
as the other idiosyncratic characters that populate this novel. Winner of the 1994 Hawthornden Prize for
Literature. Selected by BOMC as a candidate for the Best First Fiction Award of 1995.
Read also his In a Land of Plenty. (Doubleday, 1997).
This sprawling family saga, which follows a family, its four children, and the fine old house they inhabit from the early 1950s to the present, is rich in small personal
or family details and lush description. Charles and Mary Freeman and their children live in a small town in England where Charles' factory supplies most of the local
work. The children--James, Simon, Robert, Alice, and their cousins, lovers, and friends--fill these pages, and although we learn a lot about them, the omniscient
narrator's voice is oddly detached, especially concerning the women and their lives. James sees the world through his camera lens, and those photographs function
as metaphor for freedom, for loneliness, and for family. It takes about 100 pages to get really hooked into the rhythm of this story, which unfolds like a movie until
the last 100, when a horrific tragedy abruptly alters lives we have come to care about.
(Mandarin/University of Chicago Press). High-spirited, rambling novel on
theatrical adventures on the road.
(Flamingo/Dutton). Gritty account of factory life in Nottingham in the
late1950s.
(Paladin/Random). A
rambling, fictional journey through contemporary London infinitely more
illuminating than Amis' self-indulgent twaddle.
(Picador/Random). Family saga
set in East Anglia's fenlands - excellent on the history and appeal of this
superficially drab landscape.
(Minerva/FS&G). Imaginative
re-creation of life in a small town in southwest England over the course of
three centuries.
(Penguin). These simple Christian
tales were produced annually in Chester, York, Wakefield and other great
English towns, and are often revived even now.
ed. Keith Allott (Penguin). From D.
H. Lawrence to Geoffrey Hill, but few surprises and even fewer women.
ed. J. Hayward (Penguin).
Overview from Sir Thomas Wyatt to Auden, Spender and MacNiece.
(Methuen). Laugh a minute from
Congreve, Jonson, Goldsmith and Sheridan.
(Methuen, 2 vols).
The 1960s' volume features plays by Wesker, Osborne, Pinter and Orton; the 70s'
volume covers the likes of Ayckbourn, Brenton, Stoppard and Caryl Churchill.
ed. Trapp (Oxford University
Press). Includes Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Beowolf and
extracts from Chaucer.
ed. Hollander &
Kermode (Oxford University Press). Weighted towards the classic writers of the
earlier part of the century - Hardy, Conrad, Lawrence etc.
ed. Hulse, Kennedy & Morley
(UK Bloodaxe). Over fifty poets, all born since the last war.
ed.
Price (Oxford University Press). From Dryden, Swift and Pope to Sterne.
ed. Trilling & Bloom (Oxford
University Press). Carlyle, Ruskin, Tennyson, Rossetti and Wilde's Ballad of
Reading Gaol.