A. L. Rowse (1903–1997)

Overview:
During the expansion stage of the British empire, they began to govern more regions. Regions that were more centralized, and similar to the British, accepted the rule much easier, without much hardships. Other regions that were decentralized, and very different from the British, had terrible fighting causing devastation and misery. Without some similarities or agreements, there is a propensity for conflict. The raiding and reprisals escalate the damage. But after the fighting, the land became productive, and people were able work themselves out of poverty. The British empire started with a terrible navy and army, but to compete and defend its regions, was able to develop their military and naval might. The expansion brought with it economic prosperity, industrial development, efficiency in bureaucracy, and more power to the people. The author takes a more neutral approach to history, and away from the ideological certainties that cause others to die for someone else’s ideals.

Caveats?
This book is very difficult to read. There are many details given, but not enough about what they mean, and how they go together. The details themselves are hard to understand without an appropriate background.… (meer)

Just a disaster, and I'm appalled by the people who gave this a five-star review. There's a fantastic review by the ever-reliable Jeanne Addison Roberts in Shakespeare Quarterly 1979 which is worth quoting: "the motivating spirit behind this spectacular non-book is clearly commercial".

Despite being published in 1978, A.L. Rowse's edition of Shakespeare breezily reprints a 1904 text (itself a copy of 19th century texts) which is itself an unusual decision, in light of the many worthy Shakespeare editions released in those intervening years, from the Arden to the Riverside. The introductions to each play are, as Roberts notes, "drawn almost entirely from [Rowse's] own earlier work" and are of the tossed-off variety, aiming to pontificate on a half-dozen received facts about the play without, it seems, much engagement with contemporary criticism. The margin glosses are surprisingly few and, while yes, Rowse can often be delightfully eccentric, as others note, he is also sometimes just passing the time. When pages pass with only three or four glosses, one feels that this can hardly be the Shakespeare for every household in the land. Sometimes, Rowse even uses "correct" as if he is just telling the reader what word should be there, rather than asserting his opinion in the crowded field of editors from 1709 to the present day.

The only reason this edition merited two stars was because there are many hundreds of pictures, most of them nineteenth-century, meaning at least there is some historical value to this work. Given the grotesque size of the thing, this is hardly worth the purchasing, particularly not with another forty years having passed in the interim.

To quote Roberts once more, "do we laugh or cry?"… (meer)

These are short portraits of ten significant twentieth century figures, acquaintances of the author, ranging from the poet Auden and the mystery writer Agatha Christie to political figures like Nancy Astor, Lord Beaverbrook, and Winston Churchill. Historians will be particularly interested to read Rowse's accounts of G.M. Trevelyan and Samuel Eliot Morison. Throughout, Rowse lives up to his reputation as a vain but witty controversialist. Some people will probably find Rowse's conceits to be "too much," but I find him to be more than tolerable in small doses.… (meer)