<< Books/Products >> Review of The History of Britain Revealed - M J Harper
Submitted by Jez on Saturday, 29 March 2003 Page Views: 9899
MysteriesReviewed by Jezreell. This little green hardback looks quite innocuous from the outside – it has 141 pages and the rather impressive price tag of £20. Well, you might be thinking, this has to be good – no-one would pay that if it wasn’t good…The basic premise of the author seems to be that the language of English – not Anglo-Saxon, but English – is the living ancestor of all the modern European languages. That it existed as an underlying demotic language of the ordinary people of much of Europe for the whole of prehistory, that it grew and developed into the modern languages of French, German, etc and that the whole of the academic world who have any interest in linguistics or the history of language have got it all wrong… Oh, and by the way, all the Celtic peoples came from the west and never lived anywhere except where they do now, on the fringes of the coasts of the main, English-speaking countries…
At least, I believe that is what is being said. I only managed to read it through once. And it took me a long time…
Parts of the book seeks to destroy one of the sacred cows of academia. I have absolutely no objection to that as an ideal – there is a lovely saying, that the majority is always wrong… But the theory which is being levered into the hollowed place where the cow was lying is difficult to reconcile with the evidence presented in this work. A lot of the author’s time has been spent in rubbishing other theories – but at least some of these are theories which are already at worst questioned, and at best mostly dismissed by those who study the subject. Other ideas discussed – and dismissed - are simplistic school versions of history, rather than the detailed and complex actualities of modern academic study.
I did try to be objective, I really did. But the writing style is rambling, the side-issues (geological, evolutionary…) seem to be largely unrelated to the arguments being put forward, and the degree and amount of vitriol that drips unrelentingly from every page whenever the author considers the opinions, research, writings or findings of any other academic is, to say the least, distracting. It seems to be a book written more to annoy others rather than to present a reasoned case. If I could have given the author any advice before publication, it would have been ‘lose the anger, concentrate on the arguments’.
There’s probably a good article in there somewhere. But an over-priced, tiny 141 page hardback? No. Save your money for a good book on megaliths…
Jezreell
The Publisher's Web site
The author writes about being Book of the Month at Graham Hancock's web site, with a special offer price.
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