As the first of a planned six-volume series, Peter Ackroyd's Foundation embarks on an ambitious project: to chronicle the whole of English history, from its misty prehistory to current times. One could hardly have hoped for a better start, as Ackroyd (London: The Biography) paints a portrait of early England that is both historically rich and compellingly human.
Foundation begins with archeological artifacts that predate written English records and concludes with the death of the first Tudor king, Henry VII, in 1509. In between, Ackroyd uses the familiar English-history checklists of dates, battles and endlessly numbered kings not as a focus, but as a framework. Among the well-memorized signposts--1066, Henry I and his surfeit of lampreys, Richard the Lionheart, and so on--Ackroyd inserts lesser-known yet closer-to-home details of English life, with chapters exploring early English social structures, courts and justice, village life and even jokes and swear words.
The result is a remarkably fascinating and accessible history of early England, populated not only by dusty kings, but by generations of ordinary people being and becoming English--and developing a sense that we, too, are living parts of an ongoing story. --Dani Alexis Ryskamp, blogger at The Book Cricket