God Is an Englishman (The Swann Family Saga: Volume 1)

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Donald Horne: As I lay dying". The Weekend Australian Magazine. 22 September 2007 . Retrieved 14 June 2013. Adam Swann is a very interesting and smart character and his aims to build his own place in the world are a kind of microcosm of how industry and entrepreneurism changed the world in the mid-1800s. His feisty wife, Henrietta, adds another dimension to both this man and the story, and Delderfield peoples the novel with a supporting cast that feels real and substantial. While there are sections in which the building of Swann-on-Wheels, Adam’s business, can become a little laborious, the understanding of it is essential to understanding the characters and their lives.

Despite all the long stories involved, I do really like large multigenerational sagas. So far, this God is an Englishman Series is among the best I have ever read. On a scouting expedition, he meets Henrietta, the daughter of a small town mill owner. She is driven by a desire to escape and she finds it with Swann. The novel is about the rise of his business and the development of their romance. 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. God Is an Englishman. Angus and Robertson in association with Penguin Books. 1969. p.281. ISBN 978-0-207-95363-7. Into the open: memoirs 1958–1999. Pymble, New South Wales: HarperCollins. 2000. p.358. ISBN 978-0-7322-5862-7.The Swann family saga is only one of several important English family sagas written by Delderfield, including The Horseman Riding By and To Serve Them All Our Days, both of which became popular BBC mini-series. Essentially, this was really well done historical fiction. I cared about the characters, and I was not bored by historical details (mostly). At some points I wondered where it was going - there’s not much predictability in the sudden turns a man’s life can take - but overall there was momentum and motion and purpose, and satisfying change in the characters.

My favorite part of the story is Adam's own heart for the downtrodden. As an army officer, he witnessed devastation to the civilian populations of the Crimea and India, which is a major reason why he decides to quit the army. (This isn't dwelt upon too much thankfully.) He is sensitive to the suffering of his fellow human beings, whether that be the factory hands in cotton mills or the street orphans in London. When Adam starts his business, his early employees are the street kids whom Saul Keate and his wife have been housing and feeding. He pays a fair wage and treats each man in his employ as a human being. He knows names, histories, and steps in himself when there is a problem or dispute. This certainly works well as a narrative device, but it's clear that Adam really cares. A major dispute and turning point between Adam and Henrietta comes about because of the suffering of a chimney sweep. A Horseman Riding By is a trilogy comprising "Long Summer's Day", "Post of Honour" and "The Green Gauntlet". The intelligent tourist. McMahons Point, New South Wales: Margaret Gee Publishing (published 1992). 1993. p.415. ISBN 978-1-875574-16-2.Adam Swann of the God is an Englishman series is a veteran of the British Army in India who forms a transport business in the mid-19th century. The series explores the economic history of the United Kingdom from the 1860s to the outbreak of the First World War.

Horne, Donald; Footscray Institute of Technology (1985). How to be an Intellectual (Speech). Footscray, Victoria: Footscray Institute of Technology. ISBN 978-0-908533-93-0.

This truth hit home to me more profoundly several years ago when we arrived in the US for seminary. We moved into our campus accommodation and found that one set of neighbours was from West Africa and the other from Texas. Culturally, our three families had very little in common. We had very different tastes in food, music, and sport. Truth be told, our conversations did not flow freely at first. Horne, Donald; Australia Council (22 February 1985). The arts and the Australian economy (Speech). Melbourne, Victoria: Australia Council . Retrieved 14 June 2013. 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. I was not sure what to expect of this book, but when I received it and saw how large it was, I was certainly surprised. I was further surprised by how engrossing a book it actually was. Giving a plot outline really doesn't convey how good of a book this is, but I'll go ahead and try anyway. However, the conversation dynamic changed when we talked about the Lord, his Word, and his work in our lives. Suddenly, we had so much to talk about. There was warmth in our conversation as we recognized each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. We were strangers from an earthly standpoint. But because of Christ, we were family. Our love for Jesus outpaced and will outlive our love for our homelands.

Much of the history in the book is well-researched and accurate, but there is also a touch of anachronism in some of the actions and attitudes that reflect more toward the time in which the book is being written than the time in which it is set. Several times I had to stop and think about whether I found certain elements believable in 1885 or whether they didn’t seem more akin to 1970. And we get the love lives of all of the other older children as well. I find the most interesting to be those of Stella, the oldest daughter, and Giles, the third son.This is a fascinating and outstanding novel about exciting times in economic and social development throughout Victorian England. The next novels in the series - - Theirs Was the Kingdom (Swann Family Saga) and Give Us This Day (God Is an Englishman) - - bring the younger Swanns into the business and they face the next challenges as the face of road freight transport changes from horse drawn to motorised delivery. Life unfolds for Adam and his bride and Adam and his true love, his transport company. This stuff is apex entertainment literature. Nice to pass the time with, but not exactly excitement-filled. RFD is an English(i.e. somewhat more restrained) Nelson DeMille ... In other words, what matters most for our churches is that we’re together in Christ, not that we’re together in England. Over the next three years, Adam and Henrietta were married. Their first child was born 18 months later. It was a girl Adam named Stella after a girl he found in a well during his military days. Stella's eyes reminded him of the stars in the sky as they removed her body from the well. From master author R. F. Delderfield, the first in the beloved classic God Is an Englishman series.The first novel in the epic God Is an Englishman series, this book is a stirring saga of England in the 19th century, as the Industrial Revolution takes hold, forever changing the landscape of England and her people.