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An Utterly Impartial History of Britain: (or 2000 Years of Upper Class Idiots in Charge) | 
| Author: John O'farrell
Publisher: Black Swan
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy New: £3.86
You Save: £4.13 (52%)
New (31) Used (12) from £2.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  30 reviews
Sales Rank: 72
Media: Paperback
Pages: 592
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 1.6
ISBN: 0552773964
EAN: 9780552773966
ASIN: 0552773964
Publication Date: May 5, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews: Read 25 more reviews...
 Hilarious Potted History September 4, 2008
I thoroughly enjoyed this hysterical "romp" through two thousand years of British History; its well over 25 years since I was at school and was taught at lot of this in History lessons, but its amazing how much you forget or just didn't take in first time around.
John O'Farrell has taken his time and done his research and writes with such interest and humour that its probably the first time i've giggled out aloud whilst reading a history book! I absolutely recommend this book to anyone, its an easy read, not stuffy or pretentious and really brings alive the wonderful, rich history of our small but definitely not insignificant British Isles.....
 Harmless laugh a minute stuff August 31, 2008
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is harmless lightweight fun. It is a book written by a liberal lefty for liberal lefties (or those on the right who don't mind a bit of fun being poked at them). If you seriously believe that Great Britain is inherently superior, or that the British Empire was a wholly good thing, or that Maggie was a great PM you should probably avoid.
The approach to humour is of the scattergun approach, so inevitably some of the gags fall flat, but overall it had me regurlarly chortling and occasionally laughing out loud.
One interesting point is that he takes some incidents which were generally "commonly known facts", which have since been rebutted, and returns to claimimg them as genuine facts, e.g.the murder of the Princes in the Tower by Richard III and the origins of the two fingered salute at Agincort.
Recommended entertaining and informative light reading.
Finally a history education i enjoyed August 21, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
You can't help learning something with this book. it's well written, intelligent, funny, utterly impartial of course, and full of all the stuff you slept thru at school made interesting. just back from 2-weeks in northern France i was a fount of knowledge about William the Conqueror, Richard the Lion Heart, Normans, and English and French royalty.
And the most important thing i feel is that i have left this book with an interest awakened in the world around me rather than viewing the history of our country and it's neighbours as a subject i didn't take beyond GCSE.
Just what i was waiting for without realising it :)
 Save money and re-read 1066 and all that August 19, 2008
You have a spare summer and fancy writing a book but can't be bothered with all that creative muse malarky. It's a bit too soon for the autobiography( still working on doing the X-factor and the Big Brother application and frankly not so hot on the sports front) so what do you do? Well you pop along to the local reference library and sort out a stack of What the Roman's did for us, Great Kings and Queens of England, Prime Minsters I have known, and write a comic History of Britain for History refusniks. This is what John O'Farrell attempts to do in An Utterly Impartial History of Britain: (or 2000 Years of Upper Class Idiots in Charge). As you failed English know ( for Americans and other ex colonial types, local joke so ignore) when we mention Britain we really mean England except if one of you win an Olympic medal so you still have time to fit in one for Scotland, Wales or Ireland.
The question is, does it work as comedy, history or even comedic history? The gold standard is 1066 and All That and frankly, the book struggles in comparison. Both draw on popular memories of what is history and make it the raw material for humour. The historical factoids of the O'Farrell book do make it ideal for a bathroom read as you can dip in and out as nature calls. But the John O'Farrell humour of Blackadderish quips and asides* can grate unlike1066 and All That.**
Well does it work as History? Er...not really. If you had more interesting things to do at school, it does give you a simple overview of English History. If you paid attention then the lack of accuracy (Read the Terry Deary Horrid History series to see how its done properly) or the one-dimensional nature of the account soon irritates. One particular annoying clanger is the myth that the Anglo-Saxons wiped out the Romano-Celtic language and culture. The 0rigins of the British by Stephen Oppenheimer based on genetic evidence show that the SW and Wales, Southern England and the North had separate and long-standing separate waves of settlement. Meaning that the natives that the Romans met in the south were of Germanic origin and hence why so little Celtic influence in place names and English. I could go about his slighting reference to the King James Bible (an attempt to head off the radical puritans translations), his failure to address the social-religious movements of the English Civil War and their impact and don't get me started on his nonsense of the first World War. Yes, I did pay attention in History and so what if you were more popular in school.
So any redeeming features? It does have several serious asides about the lack of social justice; we the working people rarely get a look in on political and social power until perhaps the English Civil war and then struggled to get universal franchise until 1948(when students having two votes was abolished). But, this was done much better by the classic Making of the English Working Class by E.P. Thompson.
If you do get hold of a copy, pass it on to your teenagers who might at last get a sense what Sir was droning on about. As for you, its raining so get down and write the history that John O'Farrell didn't write. As for you few Americans still here, read about your own forgotten past in A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present by Howard Zinn.
Remembering that humour is subjective here are other viewpoints:
* Well researched, very funny book, which was a joy as holiday reading. Frequently laugh-out-loud. Highly enjoyable.
** a book full of silly upper-class-twit jokes. (Haw-haw! What will Master think!) .Anyway, for us who are more prosaically born and raised, this book offers no reward other than insight into the childhood of a frivolous (if Oxonian) class of recently and soon to be dead English aristocracy.
1066 and All That Rides Again (with one big difference) August 17, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
"1066 and All That" was the title of a spoof history text written in the 1930s that was less than accurate, to put it mildly, but which remained in print due to its humour for over 50 years.
John O'Farrell does write with accuracy as to the facts, but he is never less than entertaining, and frequently hilarious as to his very personal interpretations of them. This is a book that you can dip into, and almost any page will bring up a fact of which you were almost certainly previously unaware. (Want to know which English King possibly became an Italian monk? This will tell you.)
If you wanted a book to support and stimulate an older teenager's interest in history, this would be the one, but you may wish to keep it for yourself. Easy to pick up, and very, very difficult to put down.
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