A Shorter History of England

History ... should above all explain: it should give "the how and the why." It is the business of history to make people understand how they came to be; what was the origin and progress of the state of which they form a part; what were the causes which influenced each phase of change from the beginning almost to our own time. - Hilaire Belloc, from the Introduction

As a widely published author, Hilaire Belloc filled many different roles: poet, satirist, essayist, novelist, Catholic apologist, and war journalist. He even penned humorous children's books. Perhaps his greatest legacy, however, is his work as an historian. Belloc crossed pens with H.G. Wells over the anti-Christian bias of the latter's "outline of history." As he engaged with this bias, Belloc also began to counter the anti-Catholic bias of the official "Whig History" of England, especially in regard to the Reformation. Generations of Protestant historians had distorted the history of the Isles in their favor, and Belloc set about righting the record. At the time he wrote he was a pioneer in this kind of "revisionism," which subsequent generations of historians would confirm and vindicate (one need only think of such figures as Eamon Duffy, Brad Gregory, Tom Holland, and Carlos Eire). Belloc's endeavors issued in numerous biographies of key Reformation characters but also led him to publish a four-volume History of England between 1925 and 1931, of which the present work, A Shorter History of England, is his 1934 synopsis. It begins with pre-Roman England and ends with the death of Queen Victoria in 1901.