United Kingdom

Useful information on all aspects of the cultural and social life of the United Kingdom over the centuries appears in Alan Isaacs and Jennifer Monk (eds.), The Cambridge Illustrated Dictionary of British Heritage (1986), an alphabetically arranged reference work. Historical studies of social and cultural customs include Hugh Cunningham, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution: c. 1780–c. 1880 (1980); and Susan Lasdun, Victorians at Home (1981, reprinted 1985). A good description of the country’s architecture accompanies the excellent maps and photographs in Nigel Saul (ed.), The National Trust Historical Atlas of Britain: Prehistoric to Medieval (1993, reissued 1997). Other analyses of special topics include Alastair Fowler, A History of English Literature (1987, reissued 1991); Ian Ousby (ed.), The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, new. ed. (1993); David Christopher, British Culture: An Introduction (1999); Peter Miles and Malcolm Smith, Cinema, Literature, & Society: Elite and Mass Culture in Interwar Britain (1987); Colin Seymour-Ure, The British Press and Broadcasting Since 1945, 2nd ed. (1996); and Iain Chambers, Popular Culture: The Metropolitan Experience (1986), which explores the relationship between the development and growth of cities and the complexity of modern popular culture. Richard Hoggart, An English Temper: Essays on Education, Culture, and Communications (1982), offers a wide-reaching examination of intellectual life. A criticism of the commercialization of British culture is found in Richard Hoggart, The Way We Live Now (1995; also published as The Tyranny of Relativism: Culture and Politics in Contemporary English Society, 1998). The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

History

General works

The multivolume The Oxford History of England series, with the individual works cited in the appropriate chronological sections below, provides a comprehensive survey and excellent bibliographies. More concise overviews include George Macaulay Trevelyan, History of England, new illustrated ed. (1973); Arvel B. Erickson and Martin J. Havran, England: Prehistory to the Present (1968); Maurice Ashley, Great Britain to 1688: A Modern History (1961); K.B. Smellie, Great Britain Since 1688: A Modern History (1962); and Christopher Hibbert, The English: A Social History, 1066–1945 (1986). Christopher Haigh (ed.), The Cambridge Historical Encyclopedia of Great Britain and Ireland (1985); and E.B. Fryde et al. (eds.), Handbook of British Chronology, 3rd ed. (1986), are useful for quick reference.

Ancient Britain

Stuart Piggott, Ancient Europe from the Beginnings of Agriculture to Classical Antiquity (1965, reprinted 1980), a survey of the pre-Roman period; and Timothy Darvill, Prehistoric Britain (1987), a systematic account of the same five centuries, are both based on modern archaeological research. Peter Salway, Roman Britain (1981), from the above-mentioned Oxford series; and Sheppard Frere, Britannia: A History of Roman Britain, 3rd rev. ed. (1987), provide detailed analyses. A.L.F. Rivet (ed.), The Roman Villa in Britain (1969), describes various aspects of the Roman villas of Britain and the agricultural system and way of life they represent; Anthony Birley, Life in Roman Britain, new ed. (1981), studies the government, institutions, life, and religions of Roman Britain as they are reflected in archaeological finds and works of the ancient historians; and Eric Birley, Roman Britain and the Roman Army (1953, reprinted 1976), explores the organization of the Roman army through the evidence of inscriptions.

The Anglo-Saxon period