Partage des connaissances

Autres noms: MacDonald, Aeneas (nom-de-plume)
Date de naissance: 1899-08-02
Date de décès: 1996-05-20
Sexe: male
Nationalité: UK
Lieu de naissance: Leith, Scotland, UK
Lieu du décès: Hampstead, London, England, UK
Professions: historian
biographer

Membres

Critiques

Sir Francis Drake par George Malcolm Thomson

"In the joyous lilt of these sentences there is something that Drake shared with all the sea rovers: Columbus, Leif Erikson, Ulysses himself. The thrill of escape from queens, statesmen, domestic concerns, and the cramping letter of the law, into the infectious anarchy of the sea." (pg. 199)

Gripping and stirring; a frankly magnificent history. George Malcolm Thomson's biography Sir Francis Drake is everything you want from a history book that is read for pleasure rather than for a research piece; it is pacey, rich in both grand historical and anecdotal detail, and told in a bold, gorgeous and shamelessly patriotic prose that would be beyond the wit of most novelists nowadays, let alone historians. Books like this shouldn't seem this rare, especially when history offers up such wealth of character and action as is found in the story of Sir Francis Drake.

Thomson delivers this story excellently – the pages fly by – and what a story it is to read. The fiery, low-born Drake, bold, pious, and cunning, sets out from Plymouth at the blossoming of the Elizabethan age to range across the vivid scenery of the New World, plundering treasure ships of staggering wealth and sacking towns belonging to the Spanish empire – the most powerful of its time. Sailing south, hold full of booty, he circles the Cape and advances into the Pacific, up to modern San Francisco and Oregon, and then across the great sea. He returns home, now a legend, having circumnavigated the globe. And that's before we even get onto the dramatic destruction of the Spanish Armada.

Thomson's book is not a cultural feat in the way a Gibbon or Macaulay would be, nor a resource in the way a modern academic history would be, but this is great history-writing of the more popular, narrative trend. For history-as-entertainment, it doesn't get much better than this. It's the story you know, but in richer detail and told well. It captures the spirit of Drake – something that you would have thought could not be confined – and fascinates you with the world that he made his own. If you're a history buff, you might not learn much that is new, but men like Drake are not men to be studied. They are to be admired, followed, set loose.… (plus d'informations)

Signalé

MikeFutcher | Apr 7, 2020 |

The Twelve Days 24 July To 4 August par George Malcolm Thomson

789. The Twelve Days 24 July to 4 August 1914 by George Malcom Thomson (read 5 Dec. 1964) This is a short, non-brilliant account of the coming of World War I. I am awed, not by the book, but by the events therein recounted. Surely those events are a veritable watershed of history

Signalé

Schmerguls | Aug 30, 2011 |

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