England the Country of my Birth

Where do we come from? In this my 14th book that I have had published we will be travelling back in time to discover the answer to that often asked question “where do we come from”. This is a big question and in this book I will be looking at the country of my birth England and its history since time began to start my journey of discovery to find my roots and answer the question. Where do I come from? In one of my other books I wrote about “Norfolk the County of My Birth” and by doing this it inspired me to find out more about the country of my birth. In England we have the advantage of not just being English but also along with our friends from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland we also belong to the wider family of Great Britain and the Commonwealth beyond. When I started to research the history of Great Britain before producing a draft of this book it soon became apparent to me that I would need to spend a lot of time reading and researching this vast topic area before I started to write this book. I found out that a TV programme called 'Time Team' which was recorded over a twenty year period was being repeated on afternoon TV. As I had enjoyed this archeologically based factual programme, in the past I decided to watch it. The programme is introduced by Tony Robinson and featuring archaeologist Mick Ashley and Phil Harding and many other skilled contributors I decided to spend some time watching the re-runs. So using reference books, Internet, watching Time Team and making copious notes I began to get a deeper understanding of my past and the events and people that have shaped who I am today. Having done this what follows is my attempt at recording key milestones in our history from a personal perspective. So let’s start our journey together by looking at the arrival of humans on the landmass we now call the Great Britain. We will look at some of the aspects of Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age Britain before moving into the modern era. I will be taking what is just my personal view of events during Roman Britain, Anglo-Saxon Britain, Norman Britain, Tudor and Stuart Britain before moving onto the Georgian, Victorian era and the Edwardian era. We will conclude our journey through the history of the island of my birth together by looking at aspects of the First and Second World Wars before finishing by coming right up to date.