Simon Schama: The History of Britain 3: The Fate of Empire

Reviewed by DAVID LAWRENCE

Among the front-cover pictures is a grim Winston Churchill, in trademark homburg and bowtie, on his way to Parliament. It was taken in 1938, when Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was being hailed as a hero for buying Adolf Hitler's promises of peace.

It is evident in Churchill's face that he saw no prospect of peace and had a clear idea of the horrors the next seven years would bring. Unlike, say, David Lloyd George, who called Hitler "the greatest living German" and regretted that Britain had no leaders with such vision.

Quite likely Churchill's pictured demeanour was not improved by a hangover. Through the 30s and into the war years the Tory politician daily consumed liberal amounts of champagne, claret and whisky.

During the later part of the war the pre-breakfast potion was two whiskies, two Havanas and a tumbler of white wine. Close associates worried that Winston was doing more drinking than thinking. Such details are part of what makes the final in Schama's trilogy - an expansion of his television series - so readable. It's a personal history, not just in terms of his subjective calls on what to include and what to omit, but in the way it is told through characters.

Part 3 begins in the late 18th century with the reverberations of revolution in America and France, and takes us almost to the present (not quite: Jonny Wilkinson gets no mention).

Themes are: nature v progress; gender inequality and class warfare; the achievements and costs of empire; whether this is a history to cherish or to own up to (it is both, of course).

Schama examines particulars beyond the main historical narrative. It might seem a digression when he spends pages on, for instance, Wordsworth and Coleridge, and John Stuart Mill and his wife, Harriet Taylor. But he's looking at as much of British life as he can, poetry and philosophy as well as politics, and he finds they are inextricable.

It's full of fascinating footnotes, tantalising might-have-beens, and people we should know more about. Everyone's heard of Florence Nightingale, but what about Mary Seacole, whose courageous ministrations were appreciated as much, if not more, by Crimean soldiers? Her mother was Jamaican, so Mary was the wrong colour to be an official Victorian heroine.

Schama has an eye for colour, and the telling detail.

He is a patriot who has his heroes, prominently William Gladstone and Churchill, the two "most historically minded of all Britain's Prime Ministers". He is not blind to their failings - Gallipoli is on Churchill's CV - but they are inspirational heroes, as can be seen in his writing about two historic events.

On May 27, 1886, was an impassioned 3 1/2 hour speech by Gladstone to a packed Commons - "the noblest thing he ever did, and the most doomed" - in support of the Irish Home Rule Bill. Who knows what suffering might have been prevented had he carried the day.

On May 28, 1940, behind closed doors at No 10 Downing Street, Churchill, after senior advisers tried to pressure him into a deal with Hitler when things were going very badly for Britain during the war, "became magnificent" and a speech of absolute defiance concluded: "If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground."

After which he deserved a drink.

The rest is history, and the story continues.

* Published by the BBC, $40