Neil OliverRezensionen

I tend to struggle staying focused on prehistorical books, mainly because I don't engage as well with archeological perspectives in the same way as I do with historical ones. Despite this, I'm fascinated by what went on in Britain before Roman times, so I gave this a go.

I've seen a few of Neil Oliver's TV documentaries, so thought I'd try his account of prehistoric Britain. Certain phases in this book are compelling, but other areas I found my attention drifting. I tend to lose focus when unearthed objects are described in great detail.

In this deeply personal book, written after his father's death, Neil Oliver recounts some of the ghost stories and other hauntings connected to particular places in Britain (and one in Ireland), ranging from Cape Wrath in the far north of Scotland to Dartmoor in the southwest of England. Tied to these stories are Oliver's reflections about death, the nature of ghosts and hauntings, and why ghost stories have mattered to humankind since the invention of writing (and in all likelihood even before, in the tradition of oral history). HIs father's presence is felt throughout the book.

Where Neil Oliver succeeds the most is in the descriptions of the places that feature in the book, and he is able to convey an atmosphere that makes it entirely plausible that the locations in question are mentioned in connection with ghosts. His interest in people and their stories is noticeable, and he does well in bringing alive some of the history tied to these places, even if the details are necessarily brief and will require private research; many of the locations and their associated history were new to me.

Where he is not so successful is in the descriptions of the ghosts and other hauntings; while he writes well for the most part, every so often he falls into the trap of making his prose overly and unnecessarily dramatic, which I found incredibly irritating. Sadly he couldn't resist the temptation to use the odd pun in connection with a specific piece of history, which I thought was in incredibly bad taste, especially the first, which occurs in the chapter about the Battle of Aughrim, Co. Galway, in Ireland. I wish someone on the editorial team had flagged them as inappropriate, so that they didn't end up in the finished book.

While some of Oliver's reflections and thoughts committed to paper are genuinely moving and worth reading, others to me felt artificial, as if driven by the need to add something *philosophical* (on orders of the editor) – but maybe that shows only what an old cynic I am.

Now and then through the various chapters, and particularly in his closing remarks, Neil Oliver ties people's paranormal experiences to the Christian belief, which appears to give him comfort. I am an atheist, however, but the one thing that resonates most with me in the book is his observation that some of the events that he read about or were recounted to him evoke in him 'most strongly [...] that sense of something strange'. I have both my feet firmly planted in science, but I truly believe that there are things in this world that science can't explain and that defy easy explanation.

While I found it very interesting to read about the various locations, their respective history and associated ghost stories, I don't think I will seek out another of his books.

Below I've listed some of the examples of bad puns and overly dramatic language that caught my eye:

'The shock was limited at first to those who saw [the headless corpse], word not travelling as fast as the caput rendered kaput.' ('Aughrim Battlefield, County Galway', p. 25)

'Every square foot of available land was built upon, leaving just the meanest lanes and wynds threaded through the jumble, like constricted capillaries through fevered flesh. ('Mary King's Close, the Wizard of West Bow and Little Annie's Doll', p. 153)

'George Orwell (a nom de plume: Eric Arthur Blair is the name om his gravestone) saw the future, this future looming now, while he typed and coughed red blood in a white-painted house on an island at the edge of the west.' ('The Skye Ferry and the Wee Black Car', p. 275)

'Author John Vernon followed the unlikely trail of the tale of the emperor's tail [a reference to (the presumably mummified remains of) Napoleon Bonaparte's penis while researching a novel about it.' ('Number 50 Berkeley Square', p. 308)

'Every night they would have to watch the weeping woman bang her head until blood spread across the wall, staining it like a red rose blooming.' ('Mount Cottage, Dorset, and a Living Ghost', p. 324)½

It’s odd to have a history book begin with a quote from Blade Runner:

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.

But that’s part of author Neil Oliver’s theme; the Vikings explored the world from Novgorod to Newfoundland, but left precious little writing about what they saw and experienced. Some Icelandic sagas, some accounts from their enemies, and now and then runic graffiti: “Thorni bedded Helga”, for example, much like what was scrawled on the walls of my high school boy’s room (except neither the Vikings or my high school contemporaries used the word “bedded”). Possibly that’s more meaningful than you might think; a lot of Viking history is better understood if you think of them as vulgar and violent gangs of teenage boys, rather than grizzled old berserks.

Oliver gives plenty of background, beginning his story all the way back in the Neolithic; we’re almost halfway through the book before getting to the sack of Lindisfarne. After that, it’s mostly Viking history as it affected the British Isles – the Great Heathen Army, Clontarf, etc.; fair enough, since that’s where a lot of the accounts are set. An easy read. See Viking Hersir and Vikings in Britain.

I read this in preparation for a museum exhibit I may attend soon. I like to know something about the subject of an exhibit before I get there; I find it greatly increases my enjoyment of the experience. (Should I admit to studying for going to a museum? I feel like this activity clearly labels me as something, but I'm cool with that.)

What I enjoyed most in this book were the author's personal expressions of following in Viking footsteps. Whether it was sleeping in a reconstructed Bronze Age house by himself, watching the progress of a modern day Viking ship along a waterway, or standing meditatively before the remains of various Viking burials, the author was obviously touched with a sense of awe, which is compelling to read about.

However, much of the book feels like very vague history. I suppose this is only natural when much of the Viking era took place without contemporary recorders of the history. I think I wanted more names and hard fast facts, and there were SOME, but more towards the end of the book.

At least I know now how Bluetooth got its name.
And, it was pretty cool reading about the Viking settlements on Iceland, Greenland, and North America.

This book is an effort to revive the old school tales of courage and heroism that were written for children in previous decades. The writing isn't all that good and there are factual errors. Many of the illustrations are taken from "Look and Learn" (which I think is a British magazine with a series entry here: https://www.librarything.com/nseries/135727/Look-and-Learn). At any rate, the illustrations do have that pre-Shutterstock quality about them.

One is always better off going to the originals which this book is feebly trying to imitate. They don't suffer from the new facetiousnes combined with a sort of reactionary or reactive quality that books like this seem always to have these days.

I read through the chapter on John Paul Jones, but then found myself drawn to other books in my collection.

This is an ideal overview of Viking history and their impact on European history. It begins with the prehistoric roots of the Vikings rather than starting with their raids on the rest of Europe. This promotes understanding of how they became what they were. The author also clearly separates the histories of the Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish Vikings explaining the differences in their influence on history.

The book is well written and entertaining but is more difficult to follow than other books from Neil Oliver. This is a result of the author's tendency to bounce around geographically as well as through the centuries. Another challenge is the broad cast of characters. The book includes some great illustrations which are, unfortunately, not very clear in the Kindle edition.

This is a captivating look at Britain's prehistory up through the Roman occupation. The book is remarkably well written and manages to be truly exciting in parts.

I cannot praise this book enough. It is one of the best, most engaging history books I have ever read. Neil Oliver begins his history of Scotland at a time when the Earth is still molten establishing the importance of geography for understanding Scotland's history. His treatment of Scotland is also philosophical in that explains what motivated the history of the country. He has left me with a much greater understanding and appreciation of Scotland and its history.

The constant escalating superlatives become tiresome very quickly. Every single places it the absolute favourite and exceptional. It's like that audible illusion of a sound that keeps rising in pitch without end. When something is described as simply wonderful you start to wonder what kind of an utter dump it must be to warrant such a scathing rating. I just cannot stand the supercilious bombastic tone.

Easily readable with good photographic visuals. I enjoyed it.

Neil Oliver is proving to be a historian of some note. The tie in TV series of the same name was excellent, and the book maintains that.

It covers the periods of history from the Mesolithic to the Romans, covered in relatively broad brush strokes whist having enough detail to captivate.

A must read for history fans.

A well-written, easy-going, entertaining book that covers the history of Ancient Britain from the earliest humans, the Ice Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age and to the Roman occupation in broad strokes. There is not a great deal of technical language. The author discusses significant archaeological finds with passing mentions of such things as genetics and linguistics. I would have liked to read more about the languages, technological developments (other than the arrival of bronze and iron), changes in farming techniques, changes in human physiology over time etc. But, I suppose this type of information is rather difficult to glean from a small collection of bones and artifacts. The book includes two sections of colour photo inserts. It would have been helpful if the author had also included a map indicating the sites he discusses. None the less, I found the book to be interesting and informative.

The Story of the British Isles in 100 Places

Neil Oliver is the historian I aspire to be! His love of this island of ours and the historic stories he likes to tell are second to none. With this book he has highlighted places that some people may not consider and that is what makes this book so special.

As someone who has studied the history of Manchester and Lancashire in depth, I was surprised at first that he wrote a chapter on The Rutherford Building at Manchester University. Named after the father of modern nuclear physics, and former member of staff of the University. While telling Rutherford’s story, how he came to discover the atom while at Manchester, before his move to Cambridge. A story most Mancunians know but never really consider, but this makes us stop and think yes, big things do happen in the strangest of places.

Even if this is a very personal list of places to Neil Oliver, many will have visited some of the places on this list. Some are also special to me that I have visited a number of times such as the Creswell Crags on the Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire border and the Great Orme out in Llandudno.

The there is the rockery on the A303, which is currently an excellent parking spot during the traffic delays especially during the summer. Site of the summer solstice Stonehenge is to me a wonder of the world, and engineering! Or one of the places that garnered my interest and passion in history as a child, Harlech Castle.

All the places the Neil Oliver has used to tell the story of the British Isles are special, some are very well known and well visited others are not. This is a fantastic book that it helps you to view British history in a different light, and like me you will now have a new list of places to visit. While all of us will have our own list of places that can tell the history of these Isles and this is the opening of a historical debate.

This really is a fantastic book.

A History of Ancient Britain does what it says on the tin: it takes us through the lives and times of the earliest peoples in Britain, from the Stone Age up to the end of the Roman Empire. The book is a companion piece to the TV show presented by Neil Oliver and would probably be best read alongside it. On its own, I thought it felt a bit like a TV show in book form, to the point where some recapping of ideas in each chapter felt like I was coming back from a commercial break. The chapters could probably have benefitted from some more internal section breaks to make it easier to digest. The book is well written, and it definitely sounds like Neil, which I like, but there was a lot to take in. I do like that this book has two sections of colour plate photos, which were well chosen.

Recommended if you like Neil Oliver’s work or are interested in the history of ancient Britain.½

This book provided interesting reading and made for more than usual thoughtfulness in and around the time of Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday. The sea, sailors and ships does feature but the book is much more about soldiers and land warfare. What a pity, though, that Neil Oliver should describe the destroyer that brought the coffin of the Unknown Warrior to England in November 1920 as being a French destroyer called Verdun - the ship was the Royal Navy's V & W class destroyer HMS Verdun and her bell is in Westminster Abbey alongside the tomb.

Although associated with a BBC TV programme, this is a very enjoyable and readable (if at times opinionated) account of the creation of the country we now call Scotland. It is especially good at explaining the early history (up to the seventeenth century) when various groups of people, tribes and kingdoms form and merge to produce the modern state of Scotland.

In particular, the introductory chapter about geography and geology, whilst it may now appear a well trodden approach to explaining the history of a country, does appear appropriate in explaining the lowland/highland and islands divide within the country.

Neil Oliver also tries admirably to trace the kings of Scotland as they consolidated their kingdom and the fashioning of a single nation from disparate elements, where loyalty in the highland and islands was more to the leader of the clan than a faraway king. Overall he achieved this for me, so that I have a far better understanding of Wallace’s status (a war leader and figure head), followed by the political manoeuvring of Robert the Bruce and then transfer to the House of Stuart (from steward), although this latter is not easy with five consecutive kings called James, most of whom seem to have died or been killed leaving their successor an infant, with affairs of state being managed by regents. There is then a break in the line of “James’s” for Mary, Queen of Scots (with an extremely brave attempt to briefly explain and describe her reign), before James VI, who also became King of England (by invitation). The irony of James VI becoming King of England, after successive English attempts to conquer Scotland, could have been lost on no one. Indeed, in part the creation of Scotland appears to have been to have to form a coherent opposition to England.

There is a lovely opinionated comment on the time of the Bruces: “That these serially duplicitous characters - the various Bruces included - avoided having their throats cut by some honest soul on one side or the other, is an enduring mystery to me.”

There is also much of interest on language, especially dying out of Pictish and Gaelic, and religion, with Scottish Presbyterianism and the Kirk being so different from the Church of England that came out of the reformation in England.

There is an excellent description of the flowering of Enlightenment ideas (especially David Hume and of course Adam Smith) and also the commercial ambitions of eighteenth century Scotland, leading up to the catastrophic commercial failure of the dream of a Scottish colony on the Gulf of Darien (the Panama Isthmus). Although, this felt like the cherry picking of the interesting parts of the period’s history, it did still show developments in Scotland.

However, I felt that Neil Oliver lost his way in the chapters on the history of Scotland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This may be inevitable as Scotland was so much a part of the United Kingdom during this period and, to me, the boring description of twentieth century politicians. Although fascinating in biographical detail, I also lost the point of Sir Walter Scott in the chapter on the nineteenth century; as although he may have been a major literary figure of the time and may have created our “romantic” idea of Scotland and highlanders, was this how the majority of Scottish people perceived themselves, rather than the perception of foreigners?

Also, what had been a good explanation of Scotland’s different religious history becomes woollier in the nineteenth century:
“But in 1843 a dispute over whether the right to appoint ministers should lie with the congregation or with the lay patrons of the parish escalated out of control. When the dust cleared, some 40 per cent of parishioners and an eighth of all ministers had walked out of their churches never to return. The rebels formed the Free Church of Scotland and the once-unifying presence of the Kirk was gone for ever.”
There follows a very brief note of the economic consequences of what was apparently called the Disruption, without sufficient explanation of what it meant for the Scottish people (if indeed it had great meaning for the history of the country, perhaps it didn’t).

Overall, a very interesting and engaging history of Scotland up to the seventeenth/eighteenth century, but you may want to skip/skim the final chapters.½

a little hard to follow as it skips all over the place, but still a good read

A serviceable popular history of the Vikings in all their glory; Oliver provides good background on the range and scope of Viking exploration and a decent overview of their cultural practices. Oliver's enthusiasm for the topic is obvious and infectious, and he's able to weave in tales from his own travels and experiences in a way that works well with the narrative. It's made me want to go off and read some books from his bibliography, and that's always a good sign.½

The story starts with a historical note about 1453 and the advance of the Ottomans on the eastern Christian empire of Constantinople. Rumoured to be among the city’s defenders was a Scot called John Grant. Neil Oliver, historian and TV presenter, takes the real life Grant and fictionalizes him in this, his debut novel; a novel rich in detail, historical context, colours and smells.
It starts with disparate snapshots: a boy lies in a meadow and feels invisible; a stranger arrives at a Scottish village; a woman, chopping wood, feels threatened; a young girl leaps from a high wall, expecting to die.
A Moorish solider, tall and imposing with his curved blade, arrives in Scotland at the castle of a Lord. Secretly he is seeking a specific woman. He had fought in wars alongside her husband and promised to keep her and their son safe if he should die. Badr becomes a surrogate father to the boy and teaches him everything he knows, later they fight side-by-side in battle. Leña lives amongst nuns. Given her name - which means ‘firewood’ in Spanish - I thought was a Spanish woman but in the memories of her childhood we learn she, too, has been to Scotland, and speaks French. So the mystery continues.
The storylines are many and intriguing and for a long time I puzzled over how they connected. It is a story about the connections of blood, the duty owed to family. It is a long book (448 pages) but never seemed so long to be off-putting. There were passages a little too ‘history heavy’ for me, but I’m sure some readers will gobble it up.
All-in-all, a great debut. Not all historians can tell a page-turning fictional story, for some it takes three or four novels before they hit their stride, so I’m looking forward to Oliver’s next novel.
Read more of my book reviews at http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/

This is a very readable account of the history of Britain through Roman times. It is enlivened by Neil Oliver's enjoyment, as a trained archaeologist, of being able to see and even touch all the famous sites and finds across Britain for the BBC series this accompanies.½

This history of the Vikings is, I think, a good introduction to the subject. The author's passion for his subject comes through and he's obviously done a lot of research. Yet, for all that, I found the book a little light and only rarely got a feel for what life in Viking times would have been like.½

You may know Neil Oliver as a rather irritating presence on TV, strutting about preening himself. This book is also irritating, being a shallow 'book of the series' with far too much of the author and not enough of the Vikings. It takes work to make Ragnar Hairybreeks, Ivarr the Boneless and Eirik Bloodaxe (not forgetting Gorm the Old) boring, but Oliver manages it.

This is a book on the memorials to the dead of the first world war, and the names on them and what exactly is remembrance. A war memorial is such a fabric of each town that we've probably long since stopped seeing them, let alone pausing to remember those who were named on them. And that gets increasingly difficult as WW1 becomes further removed. it's now outside living memory, the last people involved are dead, and I have to go back to my great grandparents to find a participant, 2 dead generations ago.
So, what does it mean to remember? well this book tries to do this by looking at a number of memorials, and tracing the story of one or two names that are mentioned, it also takes a couple of instances (battles, a sea and rail disaster) and looks at what happened to one or two people there. By taking individual names, then taking them back to their grave or memorials. It makes it more intimate - the sheer scale of numbers makes it impossible to take in the enormity of WW1 at a glance.
It's a good project, but it did feel a little like he wanted to make a point, but was pulling his punches. The chapters are all very short, 2-3 pages at most. It was to accompany a TV series, and i do wonder if that has anything to do with the style.
It's not a survey of war memorials, but it does look at how they were raised, some of the bigger and smaller instances. It is worth noting that not all of them are standard memorials. My home town, for instance, has a roll of honour in the church, but the War Memorial (as paid for by public subscription) is, wait for it, the bus shelter on the village square. Yes. really. This might not change the way you think but it might just make you look at the memorial next time you pass it.

OK! I admit, I'm not a boy, but I decided to ignore the implicit sexism in the title and read it anyway. It's basically a big book of boys adventures.



What makes a hero - according to this book it is a combination of circumstances and example; without the heroes of the past there's nothing to live up to. The examples of herosim in this book aren't always the obvious ones and are from around the world. They make it perfectly plain how over used the word "hero" is. The media describe a footballer as a hero for kicking a ball into a net; that's not the heroism of this book. In here heroes are ordinary men who find that, when the situation calls for it, that they are capable of performing something extrordinary.



They are, in various degrees, moving. All of them ask you to think if you would have or could have done the same thing. As the tales make plain, there is nothing in a hero to show that they will become a hero - it's not always about being the biggest, strongest or boldest, sometimes it is simply about being one of a band of brothers. Some of them are similar, an outnumbered group of soldiers fight to the last man. But somehow it's never entirely pointless, and it echoes down the ages.



It slightly looses the thread towards the end and there is no rounding off chapter to match the intial opening, which means that it feels open ended - in a way, I suppose, it should do, there will always be occasions that call for heroes - we can only hope that they will be there if they are ever called for."

A comprehensive account of the Vikings travel around the northern hemisphere from the UK, and to Ireland, Iceland, Greenland and into Russia and the med. A well written tie in to the TV series.

Their skill was in the navigation techniques that enabled them to cross the Atlantic ocean and all around the European coast, The Swedish Vikings want along the river systems of the Russian mainland, and formed the Russian state.

Whilst they could be horrifically violent, their primary reason for travel was barter and trade. Where that didn't work, they would reach for the axe to enforce their point of view.

Well worth a read