A Short History of England - What Gives a Country Its Soul?

Chesterton mostly lost me after Arthur and Alfred, but I feel like I got his point in spite of that.

A Short History of England

By: G.K. Chesterton
Published: 1917
107 Pages

Briefly, what is this book about?

The book is titled the “History of England”, but it’s really a book about the soul of England. Chesterton examines this soul chronologically from the “Age of Legends” down to the time the book was written, which happened to be the middle of World War I.

What's the author's angle?

It’s Chesterton, so there’s obviously a religious angle, and a traditional cultural angle. Even expecting this, I was surprised by how much he missed the old guild system, and other features of medieval life. There’s a lot of anti-rich sentiment in the book, but he’s also no socialist either. 

Who should read this book?

I don’t think it’s practical or even wise to read everything Chesterton wrote, but I have a vague goal to read most of what he’s written. Even then I’m pretty sure that knowing then what I know now I would have advised myself to skip this book, or at least only read the first few chapters. 

The big problem is that Chesterton is not dispensing English history (contra the title) he’s interpreting it. He assumes you already know a ton of history, and he’s just going to tie it together in a new way. I’m sure a highly educated Englishman in 1917 would have had no problem with Chesterton’s references, but 100 years on, this poor American was frequently completely lost. Here’s an example:

It will be apparent, when I deal with that period, that I do not palliate the real unreason in divine right as Filmer and some of the pedantic cavaliers construed it. They professed the impossible ideal of “non-resistance” to any national and legitimate power; though I cannot see that even that was so servile and superstitious as the more modern ideal of “non-resistance” even to a foreign and lawless power. But the seventeenth century was an age of sects, that is of fads; and the Filmerites made a fad of divine right.

Who or what is Filmer and the Filmerites? One could look it up (apparently it refers to a 17th century political theorist, Robert Filmer) but you’re not going to get any information from the book. This selection, with its two references, is the first and last time the name shows up. 

I’ll tell you what I got out of the book and you can go from there, but as a general matter I wouldn’t recommend reading this book. It has all the normal Chesterton witticisms and turns of phrase, but there are easier places to get those.