Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: Good substitute for fiction at bedtime
Comment: Though it claims to be witty, I'm afraid I can't add to the glowing reports of this book. This is not to say that it is an awful book, merely that I found it hard to engage with the style of John O'Farrell.
The reading is light and is a good a book to snuggle up in bed with as any, but I found the jokes were sometimes lacking and repetitive.
In terms of information I can't say that it was controversial to anything I have so far studied. It was hardly detailed but this is understandable with how much information was crammed into the tome.
John O'Farrell attempts to see history from a low-class point of view- a difficult challenge considering the mediocre information to be found on the subject in many eras- but I think he labours his point on 'upper-class' idiots a little too much, making his witty remarks at little less witty and a little more boring.
A good read overall but a little over-done.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Ponderous text, predictable humour
Comment: Whilst the subject matter of this book (Britain's distant history - present day) is presented in a palatable way, the allegedly 'humorous' asides have made this read, at best, disappointing. I was prepared for this book to be witty (I've read some of John O'Farrell's other work), but not witty in such a pedestrian way - cheap predictable joke after cheap predictable joke. I expected better.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The best history book there is... I don't like history.
Comment: This book takes 2000 years of British (mostly English) history, and is sarcastic about it. What the TV show "Have I Got News For You" does for the last 7 days, this book does for two millennia (in 500 pages).
I've never seen the point of reading about history. Although people say that it's about learning important lessons from the past to benefit all our futures, to me it always seemed like a long list of pointless names and dates which formed some kind of list of what order things just happened to happen in.
It's very funny, mostly in very witty ways (though there are a couple of cringeworthy puns), yet it's full of factual information that really does make it feel like you're learning something. It's patriotic but in an intelligent rather than a mindless bulldog way. There's massive helpings of satire and plenty of comparisons to modern-day news events.
It drags a bit around the year 1600 (but I think that's the fault of history itself rather than the book) but the World War stuff is genuinely moving. A really worthwhile read.
This is the only history book I'll ever need. In fact it's the only history book I'll ever read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: It's not often I give a book up after reading 50 pages......
Comment: ..... but I did with this one. I bought it because a friend said it was hilarious. I found it really irritating having some reasonable historic insight interspersed with purile humour, mostly revolving around repeated incarnations of essentially the same joke. It just goes to show that different people find different things funny! I hope someone who likes this sort of humour bought it from the Oxfam shop where I sent my copy.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not only a fantastic read - but inspiring to!!!
Comment: When I first started to read this book I momentarily wondered if I was going to cope with the mix of humour and history. I needn't have worried. As I began to get into the ebb and flow of the book I thoroughly enjoyed the light hearted but at the same time educational stroll through most of the major historical events of Great Britain. Not only did I thoroughly enjoy the read; I laughed out loud more than once. More than that though the book left me inspired and thirsty to read more history! What more can you ask of a book. Throughly recommended...
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