God Is an Englishman: 1 (Swann Family Saga)

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For one thing, there is more to the story than the adventures of the individual family members. In addition to having eight children, Adam Swann has been all this time building his business, a hauling firm that has taken on the task of carrying the loads delivered around the country by the railroads from the train depots to their final destinations. (I like to think of them as English predecessors to modern companies liked Fed-Ex.) This is a feminist novel for the 1970’s: it has strong, capable women, but they are more than willing to subjugate themselves if they can only find a man who is yet stronger and more capable. While Adam and Henrietta’s relationship is less passionate than that of the Poldarks, it has some interesting twists. I thought their wedding night was very well written: Henrietta naive but determined, and both of them pleasantly surprised. The childbirth scene, not so much - not sure the author had ever actually talked to anybody who had given birth.

Stella, married at 18 to an impotent aristocrat who tries to imprison her in his life of shame and disgrace. Donald Horne: As I lay dying". The Weekend Australian Magazine. 22 September 2007 . Retrieved 14 June 2013.Cromwell, the East Anglian Puritan landowner who interrupted centuries of monarchical rule, stands both at the apex of British history and as the defining figure of the 17th century. So it was no surprise that the historian Christopher Hill (1912–2003) felt called to write an interpretation of a man who oversaw the English revolution – and about whom Hill was as conflicted as anybody else. He could not be sure whether his presence brought any real comfort but it must have eased Briarley's inner tensions to some extent for presently he said, 'I didn't see a great deal of him, sir. When I was a kid he was mostly in India or Ireland. He came here once, on leave. Last autumn, it was. We… we sat here for a bit, waiting for the school boneshaker to take him to the station.' The thread that binds the three elements into one is the national role of the Church of England, straddling religion, politics and society. So when Moreton recounts familiar episodes such as the Hillsborough disaster, various royal weddings and divorces, the miners' strike and the death of Princess Diana, he is mixing his own reactions, those of the established church, and a bigger picture of how each played in the public consciousness. Adam is a great character, and certainly deserved to have another, equally good character as his partner during this enjoyable saga, and the author has provided this in the shape of Henrietta, Daughter of a somewhat unscrupulous mill owner, a young woman with a mind of her own, whose character develops as the story unfolds.

Enjoyed the story of how the 2nd generation of Swanns is now doing, but in my opinion there should have been much more about there stories and less about remembering. It's not a matter of years, but of experience, don't you see? What are our casualties to date? Not far short of three million, I'd say, and a third of them dead at eighteen-plus. No one who hasn't been out can imagine what it's like. Mentally a man like you must have aged about a year every month, and that makes you immeasurably senior to theorists like me, and faithful old buffers like Cordwainer, Acton and Gibbs. a b c d e f "Horne, Donald Richard". Muswellbrook Shire Hall of Fame. Muswellbrook Visitors Centre. 2005. Archived from the original on 25 April 2013 . Retrieved 14 June 2013. As I mentioned before, the whole book takes place in the 1860s, so there are some fascinating explorations of the historical/economic phenomenon that were taking place at the time. For example, the NW region of Adam's business, Swann on Wheels, gets its start hauling for cotton mills in Lancashire, but when the U.S. Civil War breaks out, the whole region is affected and Adam puts the wagons to a clever and heartwarming use. Another discussion through the book is the adaptation of both the culture and the business world to the expanding reach of railroads. There is one character in particular who remembers the glory days of coaching and coaching inns and hates the incursion of the railroad. His story has a poignant intersection with the railroad that brought me to tears. He also worked on writing, arts and citizenship boards and was an executive member of the Australian Constitutional Commission. [2] He was Chairman of the Australia Council from 1985-1990.And for all the advances of contemporary historical research, God's Englishman nonetheless speaks powerfully to a contemporary audience. Arguably, the focus on Cromwell as a decidedly English figure is even more relevant in 2013, with Scotland on the brink of a referendum on independence, than it was in the more settled British culture of 1970. What is more, that peculiarly English strand of political radicalism, wordful expression and dogged, Puritan cussedness that Hill explores offers an exciting narrative of philosophical alternatives to the traditional, conservative dominance of "Middle England". Similarly, Hill's foregrounding of Cromwell as the vital enabler of Britain's development as an imperial power – through Ireland, the West Indies and the East India Company – has a relevant tone today as Britain comes to appreciate its post-colonial place in the world. It is always helpful for modern, globalised, history-lite England to understand its origins.