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Lead book review

A dutiful exercise carried out in a rush

The final volume of Peter Ackroyd’s History of England feels like a dutiful exercise carried out in a hurry, says Philip Hensher

4 September 2021

9:00 AM

4 September 2021

9:00 AM

Innovation: The History of England, Volume VI Peter Ackroyd

Picador, pp.512, 30

Like department stores, empires and encyclopaedias, the multi-volume narrative national history is an invention of the later 18th century. It reaches its apogee, promising to bring everything important within a single enclosure, in the 19th and early 20th century. After that, ambitious examples appear to be fighting against a general lack of enthusiasm.

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