Rule, Nostalgia: A Backwards History of Britain by Hannah Rose Woods
‘Impossible to summarise and delightfully absorbing, Hadley’s book is comfortably the most unexpected history book of the year’ Sunday Times
A luminous journey through a thousand years of folklore and English history.
Once upon a time in a Hertfordshire field, an ancient yew tree hid a dragon hunted by a giant named Piers Shonks. Today, the dragon and its slayer are the survivors of an 800-year battle between rural legend and national record, storytellers and sceptics.
In this brilliant and lyrical history, Christopher Hadley journeys from churches to tombs to manuscript margins, to explore history, memory and legend, and the magical spaces where all three meet.
- Publisher: ‎William Collins; 1st edition (6 Aug. 2020)
- Language: English
- Paperback
- 448 pages
- ISBN-10: ‎0008319529
- ISBN-13: ‎978-0008319526
- Dimensions: ‎12.9cm x 2.8cm x 19.8cm
About the author;
Hannah Rose Woods is a writer and cultural historian. She has a PhD from the University of Cambridge, where she taught modern British history, and in 2016 captained her college’s team to victory on that most nostalgic of television programmes, University Challenge. She has written on history, politics and culture for the New Statesman, the Guardian, History Today, Art UK and Elle magazine, and has appeared as a contributor on Dan Snow’s History Hit Podcast, Tortoise Media ThinkIns, BBC Radio 5 Live and Radio 4’s Front Row, the Today programme, The World at One and The World Tonight to discuss topics including nostalgia, public history, Victorian culture, gender equality and universities.
