A Short History of Britain in Infographics

160 Pages·2017·56.85 MB·English

by  Ray Hamilton

A SHORT HISTORY OF BRITAIN IN INFOGRAPHICS
Copyright © Summersdale Publishers Ltd, 2017
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A SHORT

HISTORY
britain
OF
in INFOGRAPHICS
RAY HAMILTON
Other books by Ray Hamilton
(all published by Summersdale)
Knowledge: Stuff You Ought to Know (2016)
M25: A Circular Tour of the London Orbital (2015)
Trains: A Miscellany (2015)
The Joy of Golf (2014)
The Joy of Cycling (2013)
Le Tour de France: The Greatest Race in Cycling History (2013)
Military Quotations: Stirring Words of War and Peace (2012)
Contents
6 Acknowledgements
8 Introduction
9 Chapter 1: What’s in a name?
15 Chapter 2: Britain through the ages
16 • Being invaded
26 • Plantagenets and Tudors
35 • Uniting the kingdom under the Stuarts and Georgians
41 • The powerful Victorians and short-lived Edwardians
48 • The world wars
56 • Modern Britain
66 • The Royal Family
69 Chapter 3: Landmarks and famous buildings
81 Chapter 4: Great Britons
93 Chapter 5: British fashion
99 Chapter 6: Transporting Britain
109 Chapter 7: Food and drink in Britain
120 Chapter 8: British sporting highlights
137 Chapter 9: Britain in the arts
156 Tips on how to be British today
Acknowledgements
My thanks to Summersdale Publishers for the opportunity
to write this book and to Chris Turton in particular for his
very helpful input and for being such a pleasure to work
with again. Thanks also to Emily Kearns for her sharp-
eyed copy-editing and to my wife Karen for first-reading
everything I write.
6
Note on dates used in this book
Just in case you haven’t come across the bce and ce dating convention before,
let me explain. We used always to say bc (before Christ) and ad (Anno Domini),
but the world’s historians decided to standardise their dating conventions a
bit, which has the added benefit of being a bit more inclusive from a faith
point of view. So now we can use Before Common Era (bce) and Common Era
(ce) instead, which is what I have done in this book, because I’m a modern
kind of a guy. No conversions will be necessary, because bce equates exactly
with bc and ce equates exactly with ad.
Note on the order of the
home nations
For fear of displaying a preference for one home nation over another, I have
referred throughout this book to England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and
Wales in alphabetical order.
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Introduction
Only by understanding our history can we fully grasp what it means to be
British today, what it means to be English, Northern Irish, Scottish or Welsh
within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, whether
we think our personal ancestors have always lived here or not (they haven’t).
Only by understanding how we gathered our language, habits and cuisine
from the far corners of the earth can we begin to understand the marvellous
melting pot we live in today.
We can be proud of the astonishing array of inventions and products
we have given to the world over the centuries, and it is fair to say that we
have always punched above our weight on the world stage for such a small
nation (think British Empire, Industrial Revolution, Olympic Games). We even
invented the weather, which is why ours has always been more interesting
than anyone else’s. Why else would we talk about it so much?
This book will look at all those things and more, at what has brought us
to where we are today, starting with our ancient history
and working our way through centuries of
achievement, glory and, let’s not forget, a fair
amount of war and infamy.
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Chapter 1
What’s in a name?
Before we start, let’s consider who we are. Much confusion
surrounds the terminology of the country we call home
and you may quite correctly consider yourself to live in
the United Kingdom, the UK, Great Britain or Britain, all of
which are widely used shorthand for the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which
is our formal and internationally
recognised title. We then further
complicate matters by living
more specifically in England,
Northern Ireland, Scotland or
Wales. But how did we end
up with so many names?
United
Kingdom
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A SHORT HISTORY OF BRITAIN IN INFOGRAPHICS
Britain Great Britain
The word Britain derives from In 1707 the Acts of Union
Britannia, the Latin word applied brought England (which included
by the Romans to describe the Wales at the time) and Scotland
territory of the Britons, the Iron together as the Kingdom of
Age tribes who inhabited what Great Britain, the first time
is now England and southern that name had formally
Scotland at the time of the existed. The ‘Great’ referred
Roman invasion in 43 CE. to the larger geographical
size of the new country, and
was never intended to serve
as a pompous declaration
of our greatness.
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