The English

A survey of the English experience through a thousand years and more, this book concentrates on the lasting characteristics of a people who early on discovered the fact of a national identity. The outstanding hallmarks of this experience were the existence of a strong central authority (in the monarchy), the provision of a system of law, and with these two the possibility of preserving individual rights and liberties in the face of a long sequence of historical vicissitudes. List of Plates.

List of Figures.

Preface.

Abbreviations.

1. The Emergence of England.

2. Communitas Anglie.

3. The First English Empire.

4. From Cromwell to Cromwell.

5. The Long Eighteenth Century.

6. The Great Climacteric.

Further Reading.

Index.

"This book will surely be recognised as the best single-volume concise history of England - lively, authoritative, and yet personal and humane. Only Elton could have written it." Michael Clanchy

"This work is thoughtful, witty, and graceful in style, a marvel of compression ... Elton argues forcefully that the English formed, and were formed by, a unique reconciliation of individual freedom with monarchically supervised order. Like Joseph Strayer's on The Medieval Origins of the Modern State (1986), this splendid work is a brief distillation of a lifetime of thoughtful scholarship and deep reflection." Choice

"Anyone may enjoy this book." The Times

"A study that is both authoritative and individualistic, showing a full awareness but not a full acceptance of recent research." Teaching History

Professor Sir Geoffrey Elton was fellow of Clare College, Cambridge since 1954 and between 1967 and 1983 was Professor of English Constitutional History. He was President of the Royal Historical Society between 1972 and 1976, of the Selden Society between 1983 and 1985 and of the Ecclesiastical History Society in 1983-84. During the fifth century following the withdrawal of the Roman military establishment from England, the armed incursions of the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others of the Barbarian tribes from across the North Sea increased, and soon became a surge. After a relatively short time the subjugation of the British was complete and England a patchwork of warring domains and isolated settlements. Yet within the space of two centuries the English (as the tribes may collectively be called) had achieved a sense of themselves that may fairly be described as nationhood. It is the evolution of this sense and of the distinctive characteristics of England and the English that gave it form and substance which Geoffrey Elton traces through twelve centuries. The result is the first one-volume history of the English nation from its origins to the present for over twenty years: it is a tour de force.