5th week -A History of Britain-

Title: A History of Britain

Author: Fiona Beddall

Publisher (level): Penguin Readers (3.2)

Summary:

Britain was invaded four times in its history by the great Roman Julius Caesar in 55 B.C., the Angle Saxons in 409, the Vikings at the end of 8^th century, and Normans in 1068. In the time of Norman kings the language of government and literature was the Normans’ language, French. So though the Saxons’ language grew into modern English, Half the words in English language come from French.

Catholic Church had great power in Britain until the time of Henry VIII, who closed Catholic and started new one when he had religious problem of marriage. Since then, Catholic Kings and Queens, and Protestant ones competed and Protestant got more power.

In the 1930s, about a quarter of the world’s population was ruled by the British and they said “The sun never goes down on our empire.” They meant that it was always daytime somewhere in the Empire and their empire was forever.

After The Second World War, most of Britain’s Empire became independent. But Britain plays important places of the world. (172 words)

Evaluation: 3 stars

In Japan, We must learn about world history when we are high school students but we can’t learn about British history as more as this book especially about each kings and queens before Tudor.

Because of the quality of this book about history, I picked up stories only which I was interested in. To say the truth, I wanted to pick the stories of each kings, queens, and governors, Magna Carta, and The Industrial Revolution but if I wrote all of them, the summary section would be too long.

I want to read a book about social sciences in the next time. (102 words)