James Hawes - The Shortest History of England

Engaging I suspect I shall remember it for a lifetime

The Oldie on The Shortest History of Germany

Here is Germany as youve never known it: a bold thesis; an authoritative sweep and an exhilarating read. Agree or disagree, this is a must for anyone interested in how Germany has come to be the way it is today.

Professor Karen Leeder, University of Oxford

The Shortest History of Germany, a new, must-read book by the writer James Hawes, [recounts] how the so-called limes separating Roman Germany from non-Roman Germany has remained a formative distinction throughout the post-ancient history of the German people.

Economist.com

A daring attempt to remedy the ignorance of the centuries in little over 200 pages... not just an entertaining canter past the most prominent landmarks in German history also a serious, well-researched and radical rethinking of the continuities in German political life.

Nicholas Boyle, Schrder Professor of German, Cambridge University

Fascinating as an introduction to the most important country in Europe today, this is a great read, and an ideal primer

Tribune on The Shortest History of Germany

Yes, the Nazis are here, but so too is a history stretching from the Germanic tribes who took on the Roman Empire, right up to Chancellor Angela Merkel Comprehensive, vivid, and entertaining if you want to understand a country on which much of the free world is now pinning its hopes, you could do worse than start here.

Irish Examiner

Absolutely brilliant Hawes sets about tearing up the Prague picture postcard-image of Kafka with tremendous, crowd-pleasing vigour

Ian Sansom, Guardian, on Excavating Kafka

performed with wit and finesse his book is full of enlightening surprises [Hawes] is an admirable guide, leading us through this tangled intellectual copse.

The Times on Englanders and Huns ii

In 1944, on her way to school in Cricklewood, my mother heard a V-1 cut out above her. She threw herself flat on the pavement. Some twitch in the Nazi gyroscope decided that glass and rubble would rain down all around her, but that she would live to tell the tale.

My sons have heard it from her. So with luck, in 2094, one or other of them will be able to tell his grandchildren that he knows what it felt like to dodge a V-1 in London in 1944, because their great-great-grandmother told him.

A century and a half, hurdled by a family story. Try it with your own. Seven long generations like that a short queue at the check-in to eternity, the old and the young holding hands and we are back at the Battle of Hastings.

Our past whispers in our ears, whether we hear it or not, and makes us what we are. And given the state of England today, wed better get to know ourselves a bit better. So where to begin? Well, we know almost to the hour when England emerged from archaeology, and entered history.

At dawn on the 27th August, 55BC about fifteen long generations ago a fleet appeared out of the night off Ebbsfleet in Kent, bearing none other than Julius Caesar. xii

From Caesar to the Conqueror

55 bc 1087 ad

England before the English

By 55 bc , Rome had vaguely known for many years of a mysterious land beyond Europe inhabited by people the Greeks called the Pretaniki or Bretaniki. It was famous mainly as a source of tin, the vital metal that could transmute copper into brass or bronze. The Phoenician merchants who dominated this lucrative trade kept their business secrets to themselves, so when Caesar invaded from newly-conquered Gaul, he knew that the Britons had dealings with the Gauls, that tin could be found there, and that the nearest part of the island was called Kantion, but that was about it.

Having called to him the merchants from all parts, Caesar could learn neither the size of the island, nor what or how numerous were the nations which inhabited it, nor what system of war they followed, nor what customs they used.

Julius Caesar, The Gallic War

Caesars fleet crossed the Channel in a single night, but could find no decent anchorage; his attempted landing at Ebbsfleet was met with a reception so ferocious that it never got off the beach. He tried again the following year. This time he made it as far as the Thames Valley, which was enough for him to learn that the Britannici were not a single people at all.

Inland, there was an old-established population, whereas the maritime portion (i.e. the south-eastern coastal region) had recently been settled by raiders from the country of the Belgae. Indeed, a Belgic leader had recently claimed some kind of overlordship in Britannia. Modern archaeologists agree that there was a distinctive Aylesford-Swarling/Atrebatic culture in the South-East at this time, closely linked to the Belgic Gauls.

The South-East is already different in 54 bc : Belgic cross-Channel culture in Caesars day

Caesar and his army didnt stick around, but the elite of Britannia were suitably awed. Some thirty years later, the Greek writer Strabo described Britannia as virtually a Roman property, whose chieftains came to dedicate offerings in the Capitol. By 43 ad , Emperor Claudius decided that it had developed enough to be worth invading and taxing properly.

Claudius really only cared about the tribes already advanced enough to be making and using coins. The limit of their territory is no coincidence. It is also the line of the Jurassic Divide, where young sandstones, clays and chalks give way to older shales and igneous rocks.

Geology, geography and climate conspire timelessly in favour of the South-East

By 100 ad , the South-East was a peaceful, prosperous colony. Its people, wrote the historian Tacitus, were obviously related to the Gauls. Beyond, to the north, were people clearly Germanic in origin, while those in the west were like the Iberians. It now occurred to the Romans as it occurred to almost every later ruler of the South-East that, since they controlled the richest part of the island, they should also rule those other peoples.