Book Review: "Remember, Remember (the Fifth of November)"

Parkinson, Judy. "Remember, Remember (the Fifth of November): The History of Britain in Bite-Sized Chunks." (London: Michael O'Mara Books, 2008). 182p. 10pounds.

The book attempts to survey all of British history through a chronological series of encyclopedia entries, each one page in length. Each page outlines a major historical event, figure or stage in British history, beginning with the Roman Invasion of AD43 and ending with the founding of the United Nations. The title, of course, refers to the Gunpowder Plot on 5 November, 1605, still remembered with the celebration of Guy Fawkes Day.

Parkinson has succeeded in creating an abundantly clear survey, which will no doubt clear up confusion many people have as to the order of events in British history. Readers can clearly see how events influenced or were influenced by one another; no entries appear to stand out as isolated from the rest, which is a credit to the author's choice of topics.

Each entry can stand alone and the book can be used as a reference, or it can be read through from front to back. Those who elect the latter will note that at times events or persons are explained in more than one entry, especially in cases where one entry is the subset of another - a battle and a war, for instance. This repetition makes it possible for readers to use the work as a reference book and should not be considered a failing.

Someone looking for a brief survey, or an undergraduate about to embark on a British history course, could certainly benefit from this book. Its brevity and journalistic prose make for light reading. Parkinson has done a fabulous job of creating what is essentially a chronological encyclopedia without leaving the reader feeling like they have been sitting with a copy of Britannica.

As the entries are short and without footnotes, the book is not of much scholarly use - though no encyclopedia is. There are a handful of instances that used direct quotations in which even a quick footnote or reference would have been appropriate so that readers interested in pursuing further reading could at least be directed. However, the lack of references was not a major issue.

Nearly all British historians will feel that their area of expertise did not receive proper treatment; many important events are only referenced in an entry devoted to something else. For instance, the South Seas Bubble gets a single sentence in King George I's article (p. 102) and nothing of its own. Likewise, many other important aspects of British history do not appear at all. Nevertheless, the task of writing two-thousand years of history in 150 entries is a major undertaking and many worthy events must be cut to make the project doable.

Since it is impossible for anyone to be an expert on a topic so vast, I am unable to comment upon the accuracy of each entry. However, I can say that the entries are fairly consistent, with a few notable exceptions. The articles "Munich and the run-up to the Second World War" (p. 174) and "Germany Invades" (p. 177) list that Britain formally declared war on Germany on September 1, 1939 and September 3rd respectively. Even a non-historian can see issue with this claim.

The most glaring problem the reviewer noted was in the "Magna Carta" entry (p. 53). In this article, the author makes a bold claim that the Magna Carta is "the most famous and most significant legal document in the history of democracy" (p. 53). This is a very partisan claim that most Americans and a good many others around the world would certainly debate. Given that the book has limited itself and decided not to provide evidence to support such bold claims, they should not be included. One cannot assume that a reader has the time or inclination to look further into the topic to come to an educated conclusion.

Apart from these minor failings, the book is certainly worth the cost and time required to read it. It would make an excellent course reading for the first week of a British history survey. More countries could benefit from a similar survey of their own history.

Journal Articles in an RSS feed?

Has anyone come across an academic journal that releases its contents in an RSS feed that users can sign up for? Would certainly make it easier to keep up with the latest scholarship.

History in the UWO Bookstore

I went into the UWO bookstore the other day to look for Christmas presents to myself. I had a walk around the non-textbook part of the store, which accounts for about a quarter of the inventory. To my surprise, books about history and historiography in this "popular" section included four shelves. That's more than all the fiction combined; it's four times more than the comedy, four times more than the cooking, and twice as much as the biography.

Guess there's more of a market for history out there than I thought.

Visualization of Newspaper Content

I made a quick visualization of what the people of Canada are saying about the current coalition that seems imminent in Canadian federal politics. The visualization is made with Wordle, which is a snap to use.

The first is the frequency of word use amongst commenters to the article: "Tories launch anti-coalition ad blitz." This article was printed in the left leaning "Toronto Star" on December 2, 2008. There were 264 comments in total.













This second one is the word frequency of commenters on the National Post article, "Dion mortgages federalist ideals to sign on with separatists." The National Post tends to lean to the right on political issues. There were 64 comments to this article.













Both articles essentially say the same thing, but with opposite perspectives on what makes good politics.

It's interesting to note the slight differences in the two. In the first article, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is the clear focus, whereas his name is noticeably smaller in the pro-Harper National Post article.

Likewise, "Quebec" is fairly prominent in the National Post article, which suggests commenters frequently pointed to the fact that this Liberal led coalition will involve the separatist party, the Bloc Quebecois. To the right, this is akin to a deal with the devil. In The Star, "Quebec" is barely visible - you can squint to see it next to "People."

There are plenty of other assumptions you could make about the contents of these comments and the worries of both sides based on the visualizations, some of which might even be true. And, I know it's not really history, but one day it will be.