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Farewell The Trumpets : An Imperial Retreat

Farewell The Trumpets : An Imperial Retreat

List Price: $28.00
Your Price: $28.00
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Final installment of a masterpiece
Review: Even if you haven't read the other two volumes in the Pax Britannica trilogy, Farewell the Trumpets is a must-buy. It's worth it just to read the brilliant eulogy for Winston Churchill, where in one chapter Morris does better job of capturing this man and his place in history than lesser authors could do in a whole volume.

My recommendation is to take your time and savor this book. Like Heaven's Command and Pax Britannica, Farewell the Trumpets is episodic in its presentation, each chapter a self-contained nugget, so that you can enjoy dipping into it frequently.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Another cogent narrative of the Empire's decline.
Review: I just completed the final volume of James Morris' trilogy. The writing is superb. Although not as good as volume one (Heaven's Command), this book is well worth keeping. As usual; my only quibble is that there are no pictures in the Harcourt set that I have. That takes away a star.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Another cogent narrative of the Empire's decline.
Review: I just completed the final volume of James Morris' trilogy. The writing is superb. Although not as good as volume one (Heaven's Command), this book is well worth keeping. As usual; my only quibble is that there are no pictures in the Harcourt set that I have. That takes away a star.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Trilogy is a wonderful account of the British Empire
Review: Jan Morris is a fascinating personality. She originally was a he, and he was a guardsman in the British army, an officer from a good family. He left the service, became a historian, and then went to Denmark or wherever, and came back a she. She now writes unusual, affecting, eccentric, entertaining books that are terribly British and a bit disorganized. The Pax Brittanica trilogy is her life's work, near enough, though she's done other books that are very good. This one, however, is three volumes long, quite involved and very detailed. The series includes Heaven's Command, Pax Britannica, and Farewell the Trumpets. The first generally deals with the Empire in the 1840s on, the second follows things through the thirties, and the third follows the empire through its disbandment.

As I said, Morris is eccentric. This means that though the books are sort of chronological, they aren't exactly sorted the way you would expect, and this isn't really a history of the empire or the era. Instead, it's an anecdotal collection of tales, incidents, and sketches, marvelously told. Sort of like the difference between going through a cafeteria once and a sumptuous buffet where you go back and forth, taking time with what you enjoy. I thoroughly enjoyed the books, though I would hesitate to recommend them to someone who wasn't clear on either geography, or at least some basic history of the British Empire. Since this isn't either of those, you need them to understand what she's talking about occasionally.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Very good job
Review: This is, in my opinion, how an history book should be written. Jan Morris takes you through the last years of the victorian empire in a way no author has done before. She will transport you from South Africa to Iran, from Bombay to Dublin, with her unique style she will picture the historical events as you were seeing them happening before your eyes. She is particularly good at outlining personalities. You will feel like you know Lawrence of Arabia or Churchill personally, after you read about them in Jan Morris' book. Finally a book about the victorian empire that is not a simple sterile list of dates, places and warship names, finally a book that takes its time to go through the less investigated aspects of an age, giving you interesting and detailed account of how people lived, how soldiers felt about a battle and so on. I recommend this book to anybody who is interested in the history of colonies and victorian empire.


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