A highly entertaining read for anyone interested in English history and culture, this great myth-busting book takes you on a great ride through history and the national character. Think we're the land of Punch and Judy and Morris Dancing? Think again as both traditions started in southern Europe. Love Winston Churchill's wartime speeches? Well, they were recorded by an actor. Packed with details on real English history, the book explodes a range of national myths from bluebirds in Dover (they are not indigenous European birds) to the origin of the Cornish pasty (they might have been invented in London), from our stiff upper lip (an Americanism) to where you can spend a Scottish bank note. English arts, entertainment, food, drink, kings and queens, traditions as well as politics are all covered to give you a fascinating insight into the true England. Includes an additional chapter on Scottish, Welsh and Irish myths that we've been peddling in England for decades and need to be laid to rest.

A highly entertaining read for anyone interested in English history and culture, this great myth-busting book takes you on a great ride through history and the national character. Think we're the land of Punch and Judy and Morris Dancing? Think again as both traditions started in southern Europe. Love Winston Churchill's wartime speeches? Well, they were recorded by an actor. Packed with details on real English history, the book explodes a range of national myths from bluebirds in Dover (they are not indigenous European birds) to the origin of the Cornish pasty (they might have been invented in London), from our stiff upper lip (an Americanism) to where you can spend a Scottish bank note. English arts, entertainment, food, drink, kings and queens, traditions as well as politics are all covered to give you a fascinating insight into the true England. Includes an additional chapter on Scottish, Welsh and Irish myths that we've been peddling in England for decades and need to be laid to rest.

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" J.R.R. Tolkien's zeal for medieval literary, religious, and cultural ideas deeply influenced his entire life and provided the seeds for his own fiction. In Tolkien's Art, Chance discusses not only such classics as The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion, but focuses on his minor works as well, outlining in detail the sources and influences–from pagan epic to Christian legend-that formed the foundation of Tolkien's masterpieces, his "mythology for England."

Miss Chloe Fong has plans for her life, lists for her days, and absolutely no time for nonsense. Three years ago, she told her childhood sweetheart that he could talk to her once he planned to be serious. He disappeared that very night. Except now he’s back. Jeremy Wentworth, the Duke of Lansing, has returned to the tiny village he once visited with the hope of wooing Chloe. In his defense, it took him years of attempting to be serious to realize that the endeavor was incompatible with his personality. All he has to do is convince Chloe to make room for a mischievous trickster in her life, then disclose that in all the years they’ve known each other, he’s failed to mention his real name, his title… and the minor fact that he owns her entire village. Only one thing can go wrong: Everything.

This celebration of the English countryside does not only focus on the rolling green landscapes and magnificent monuments that set England apart from the rest of the world. Many of the contributors bring their own special touch, presenting a refreshingly eclectic variety of personal icons, from pub signs to seaside piers, from cattle grids to canal boats, and from village cricket to nimbies. First published as a lavish colour coffeetable book, this new expanded paperback edition has double the original number of contributions from many celebrities including Bill Bryson, Michael Palin, Eric Clapton, Bryan Ferry, Sebastian Faulks, Kate Adie, Kevin Spacey, Gavin Pretor-Pinney, Richard Mabey , Simon Jenkins, John Sergeant, Benjamin Zephaniah, Joan Bakewell, Antony Beevor, Libby Purves, Jonathan Dimbleby, and many more: and a new preface by HRH Prince Charles.

The first book in Peter Ackroyd's history of England series, which has since been followed up with two more installments, Tudors and Rebellion. In Foundation, the chronicler of London and of its river, the Thames, takes us from the primeval forests of England's prehistory to the death, in 1509, of the first Tudor king, Henry VII. He guides us from the building of Stonehenge to the founding of the two great glories of medieval England: common law and the cathedrals. He shows us glimpses of the country's most distant past--a Neolithic stirrup found in a grave, a Roman fort, a Saxon tomb, a medieval manor house--and describes in rich prose the successive waves of invaders who made England English, despite being themselves Roman, Viking, Saxon, or Norman French. With his extraordinary skill for evoking time and place and his acute eye for the telling detail, Ackroyd recounts the story of warring kings, of civil strife, and foreign wars. But he also gives us a vivid sense of how England's early people lived: the homes they built, the clothes the wore, the food they ate, even the jokes they told. All are brought vividly to life in this history of England through the narrative mastery of one of Britain's finest writers.