The Seven Ages Of Britain: A History Of The British People

A History of the British People from the Ice Age to the Industrial Revolution.

The real story of the people of Britain from the end of the last Ice Age to the dawning of the modern world, with an introduction by the TV series presenter, historian Bettany Hughes.

Published to tie in with the seven-part Channel Four TV series, this is an exploration of the lives of the ordinary inhabitants of Britain, starting when Britain first became an island at the close of the last Ice Age and ending at the beginning of the agricultural and industrial revolutions. It is an intimate social history of how we used to live and how we have adapted to the great changes that a hundred centuries of island life have wrought.

Beneath the names and dates of schoolbook history there is another, often overlooked story - the history of the people as a whole and their experience of life through the ages. This book is a unique social history telling the story of the people of Britain from the Mesolithic to the dawning of the agricultural revolution. It explores the lives and times of the ordinary people of Britain who rarely emerge in the light of written history but nonetheless were witness to its every twist and turn.

This is a journey to meet history's silent majority and catch a glimpse of their experience of life in each age against the backdrop of the grander event of that time. It is the story of those who never had the privilege of making history but to whom it happened nonetheless - who lived with it, and survived its consequences.