A Brief History of England

England’s history is an inexhaustible subject. Huge tomes have been written on individual monarchs, colorful personalities, architectural styles, and historical eras. But in this section, I’m going to be as brief as a bikini and give you a history of England that covers only the bare essentials:

• Prehistory: Beginning about 5,000 years ago, a Neolithic civilization was cutting and hauling megaton slabs of stone over dozens of miles and erecting them in elaborate geometric configurations. Stonehenge is the most famous example of their work.
• The Romans arrive: When the Romans conquered England in A.D. 43, they suppressed or subdued the local Celtic tribes. The legendary Queen Boudicca (or Boadicea) was a Celtic warrior queen who fought back the invading Romans. (You can see a statue of her on Westminster Bridge in London.) The Romans brought their building and engineering skills to England, and you can see the remains of Roman walls, roads, forts, temples, villas, and baths throughout the country — most notably in Bath.
• Northern invaders: With the Roman Empire’s breakup in A.D. 410, Jutes, Angles, and Saxons from northern Europe invaded England and formed small kingdoms. For the next 600 years or so, the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms fought off Viking raiders. In the north, Eboracum, a Roman settlement, became Jorvik, a Viking city, and eventually York. _ William the Conqueror: The next major transitional period in England started in 1066, when William of Normandy fought and killed Harold, the Anglo-Saxon king of England, at the Battle of Hastings (the site of today’s town of Battle. William and his French nobles took over the land and built castles — Windsor Castle and the Tower of London are two examples — and cathedrals that still stand today. Every monarch up to the present day claims descent from William the Conqueror.
• Magna Carta: King John, a Plantagenet, signed the Magna Carta in 1215, granting more rights to the nobles. What about the common man and woman? As serfs and vassals in a closed, hierarchical, class-ridden society, their lot wasn’t an easy one. Geoffrey Chaucer (1342–1400) was the first writer to give us some recognizable portraits of folks who lived during the medieval period, in The Canterbury Tales.
• Hundred Years’ War: At home and abroad, war and bloodshed tore England apart for more than 300 years. The Hundred Years’ War between France and England began in 1337. During this same period, in the War of the Roses, the Houses of York and Lancaster fought for the right of succession to the English crown.
• Tudor and Elizabethan England: Henry VIII, the Tudor king famous for taking six wives, brought about the next great shift in what had been Catholic England. In 1534, he dissolved all the monasteries and became head of the Church of England. His daughter, Elizabeth I, ruled during a period of relative peace, power, and prosperity. The Elizabethan period was England’s Golden Age, the time when Shakespeare’s plays were being performed at the Globe Theatre in London.
• Civil war: In 1603, James VI of Scotland became King James I of England, uniting the crowns of England and Scotland. But conflicts between monarchs and nobles were endless. Charles I, seeking absolute power, dissolved Parliament in 1629. He was beheaded in 1649 after Oliver Cromwell led a bitter civil war between Royalists and Parliamentarians. Cromwell’s armies destroyed churches and royalist strongholds throughout the country. Cromwell was elevated to Lord Protectorate of the Realm, but by 1660 a new king, Charles II, was on the throne. This time, however, his powers were limited.
• Fire and plague: London, which had been growing steadily, was devastated by two back-to-back catastrophes: the Great Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of 1666.
• The Victorian Empire: England reached its zenith of power and prestige during the reign of Victoria (1837–1901), who ruled over an empire so vast that “the sun never set” on it. The Industrial Revolution spawned another major change during this period, moving England away from its agrarian past and into a mechanized future. Charles Dickens and other social reformers exposed the wretched working conditions in Victorian England, where children as young as 6 had to labor in mines and factories. The late Victorian age was the time of Sherlock Holmes, a fictional detective created by Arthur Conan Doyle, and Jack the Ripper, a real-life serial killer who terrorized London’s East End.
• England in the World Wars: England suffered terrible losses during World War I (1914–1918) but emerged victorious. During World War II, from the fall of France in 1940 until the United States entered the war in 1941, England stood alone against Hitler. Winston Churchill was the country’s prime minister during the war years. With strictly rationed food, mandatory blackouts, and terrible bombing raids that destroyed cities and killed tens of thousands of civilians, life in wartime England had a profound effect on its citizens. Shortages continued for many years afterward.
• The welfare state: Another major societal shift occurred in 1945 when the Labour Party began to dismantle the empire and introduced the welfare state. Under the National Health System, every citizen in the United Kingdom can receive free healthcare and pension benefits. It wasn’t until Margaret Thatcher and the Tory Party came into power during the 1980s that England began privatizing formerly state-run agencies, such as the railroad (with what some say are disastrous results).
• Queen Elizabeth II: Queen Elizabeth II ascended the throne in 1952. The fairy-tale wedding of her son Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spencer was the last high point for the House of Windsor. Charles and Diana’s subsequent divorce seemed to unleash a floodgate of royal scandals, with the result that the popularity of the British monarchy reached an all-time low. In 2002, the queen celebrated her 50th anniversary on the throne. But the queen is no longer the richest woman in England: J. K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books, now holds that title.
• New Labour: In 2001, Tony Blair was elected to a second term as prime minister, and New Labour, with its centrist approach, was firmly in control of the government. However, in the 2005 elections, the party lost one-third of its seats as voters expressed their discontent with Blair’s continuing support of the war in Iraq. Blair stepped down as prime minister in June 2007, and was succeeded by Gordon Brown.
• Terrorist bombings: In July 2005, a day after exultant Londoners learned that their city would host the 2012 Olympic Summer Games, terrorists detonated bombs in the London Underground and on a double-decker bus, killing 54 people and wounding hundreds more. Londoners stood together and carried on, showing the world that they would not be cowed by acts of violence.