Exploring the Rich History of the British Isles Through 100 Unique Locations

Pathfindr52: Very easy an enjoyable to read. Extremely well-written! Evocative. Caused me to add several places to my bucket list of travel destinations.

United States on Aug 25, 2023

Udo Schubert: Der Artikel hat mir sehr gut gefallen

Germany on Feb 24, 2023

Joe B.: Oliver masterfully provides a selection of key historical sites and moments that helped define the British isles. In doing so he also helps to provide that role which history is supposed to, namely teaching us lessons for the present and future that we would do well to heed.

United Kingdom on Jan 10, 2023

Dr. Gary: The author chose 100 areas/sites in the UK that have historical and/or archaeological significance and writes about them in a very engaging and thought provoking manner. I have learned a lot by reading this book and enjoy the author’s sense of wonder regarding some of the areas he writes about.

United States on Apr 26, 2022

Philip Meers: This is an interesting collection of places and objects, but I'm afraid that Mr Oliver comes across as somewhat a poetaster. The book is full of atmosphere, whimsy, and imagery, but too light on the facts. I felt that I'd bought a cheese sandwich, but when I looked there was just a slight scraping of butter...goodness, Mr Oliver's whimsy has rubbed off on me!

This is not the book that I expected from an historian of repute. Frankly, I am finding it increasingly tedious, and I've only got to Great Heathen Army attacking Mercia...

I shall finish the book, but I cannot recommend it as anything but a light read rather than an academic examination.

Edit:

I finished the book, but only by skimming pages. It went from being a tedious slog, to downright boring. Although the level of fact improved, as I thought it might when dealing with eras with more evidence, it was still not as good as I expected. To have provided more detail on 100 places would have produced a book that was too long, so perhaps refining the places to the 50 most significant would have been better.

I have enjoyed Mr Oliver many times on television, but find his literary style not to my...

United Kingdom on Apr 06, 2022

Alberto Isaac: Neil Oliver has one of those voices that you could listen to all day but not just listen to but pay attention to what is being said, just like Sir David Attenborough among others. Although this is a book and not a history documentary I've read it as if Neil was narrating it to me as I'm sure others will do too.

Neil writes in the same fascinating way he presents his documentaries and I found the book extremely enjoyable. I guess in some ways it could be classed as "alternative" places, I would say 80% if the places and stories he tells most folk will never have heard of which adds to the enjoyment.

It's a great book written for the layman, the Joe and/or Josephine Blogs of the World. Easy to follow and understand. It's not filled with data after date etc. The fascinating stories that go with the places are what makes the book so special. Some of them direct others indirectly linked to the individual places.

All in all a great read from a great writer.

I would recommend the book to anyone and everyone.

United Kingdom on Jul 18, 2021

Ian Barker: Historian Neil Oliver, perhaps best known for the BBC’s ‘Coast’ series, takes the reader on a tour of locations in the British Isles. These are all places of historical significance, ranging from the earliest traces of human activity through invasions, battles, scientific discoveries, key individuals and more.

Oliver is great at invoking the atmosphere of places and events, when he writes about the tsunami that separated the British archipelago from continental Europe over a million years ago you can almost feel its power.

Some of the places here you may know, others you may not, but each has a compelling story to tell. This is, more than anything, a love letter to the British Isles, it’s entertaining and thought provoking in equal measure.

United Kingdom on Jun 13, 2021

L. M Young: The book opens long before kings and queens and the myths of Arthur or even the Druids, on a site in Norfolk where human footsteps almost a million years old were found embedded in mud in 2013. Men, women, and children searched for food on British shores so many years ago. It ends in Kent, on a beach slowly eroding, while a nuclear power plant drums away in the distance. In between he visits areas of great beauty in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland: the obvious places like Stonehenge, Lindesfarne, Runnymede, the Globe, Culloden, and the Cenotaph, and lesser known places like Orkney, Great Orme, Perthshire's venerable Fortinggall yew tree, Staithes (Captain Cook's hometown), the Brontё home at Haworth, and Scapa Flow. And eighty-six other fascinating locations.

This is a beautifully-told book. Oliver has a great way with language, his prose comes so close to poetry sometimes, and he makes each visited place a magical location. Combining history, archaeology, zoology, botany, preservation, anthropology, geology, meteorology, sociology, religion, and more, this is a tour-de-force through time.

United States on May 11, 2021

LC: Neil Oliver has written books and hosted TV shows on the archeology of Britain. They are all superb. Here in this book he encapsulates his findings and extrapolations into brief summaries organized by discrete places. Just like his other works this book is one of those that you hate to see come to an end because you are always wanting more and more....

United States on Apr 25, 2021

Robert Moody: This is one of the most enjoyable books - on any topic - that I have read in a long while. Scottish archaeologist Neil Oliver is best-known for his television documentaries but he is also a vastly talented essayist. He was thoughtful in his selection of places. It wasn't possible to include every significant site in the British Isles but each is important in its context. But the most impressive feature of this book is Oliver's use of language. I've only been to twenty-one of the one hundred places profiled, but his descriptions of those places were brilliant. For example, this about Orkney: "When the sky is low enough to wrap around the shoulders and the wind is blowing until you must stand and walk like a half-shut knife, Orkney can seem like a green raft that has slipped its mooring to float adrift on the open sea. When the clouds break and light rains down out of the blue, it is more like the arrivals lounge for Heaven itself." Similarly, he describes the light on Iona: "it seems to spill around the island like a good idea or a soft wind." Also about Iona: "Whoever they were, the monks that built and boarded little boats made of sprung saplings and stretched hides to cross to...

United States on Mar 17, 2020