Through most of his highly distinguished career as a Cambridge historian, professor Robert Tombs focused on France. But in The English and Their History, published in the United States in 2015, he turns to home, and the result is magnificent. His is a magisterial survey of a people over 2,000 years in a single volume, yet nothing is skated over. The work coruscates with new research, telling detail, and dry wit.
It also debunks many myths, arguing convincingly, for example, that England is not the declining power we think we see through the lens of an empire won and lost. The English have, Tombs argues, resumed their historical position as one of a few great, ambitious, creative, rich, and well-governed peoples. He debunks certitudes across the ideological spectrum. Did you know the English have always been among the most highly taxed and yet prosperous people in the world? Or that their vast past wealth cannot, on the evidence, be attributed to England's unusual adherence to a policy of unilateral free trade?
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