The Britannias
An Island Quest
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The Britannias
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Narrated by:
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Alice Albinia
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By:
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Alice Albinia
About this listen
Brought to you by Penguin.
The Britannias tells the story of Britain's islands and how they are woven into its collective cultural psyche. From Neolithic Orkney to modern-day Thanet, Alice Albinia explores the furthest reaches of Britain's island topography, once known (wrote Pliny) by the collective term, Britanniae. Sailing over borders, between languages and genres, trespassing through the past to understand the present, this book knocks the centre out to foreground neglected epics and subversive voices.
The ancient British mythology of islands ruled by women runs like a secret, hidden river through the literature of this land - from Roman colonial-era reports to early Welsh poetry, Renaissance drama to Restoration utopias - transcending and subverting the most male-fixated of ages. The Britannias looks far back into the past for direction and solace, while searching for new meaning about women's status in the body politic. Boldly upturning established truths about Britain, it pays homage to the islands' beauty, independence and their suppressed or forgotten histories.
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Critic reviews
'A dazzlingly brilliant book. Travelling by boat, swimming through kelp, riding on a fishing trawler, Alice Albinia takes us on an extraordinary journey around the British isles, revealing a liquid past where women ruled and mermaids sang and tracing the sea-changes of her own heart.' (Hannah Dawson)
What listeners say about The Britannias
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Mrs B Payne
- 03-02-24
So interesting historical facts and social status of island with the feminine role woven in.
Fascinating book feel like need to listen again to allow everything to sink in. Fabulous and engaging
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Rachel Redford
- 22-08-24
Packed fill of interest but flawed
Alice Albinia must surely have elected this loudly resonating name for herself! Albinia has lived abroad, travelled widely and her subject knowledge is phenomenal. In whichever part of the world she has become established – and here it is in fifteen of Britain’s off-shore islands - she has fully immersed herself in it. In The Britannias she delves deeply into the history of each island, its culture, beliefs, social structures, myths, seascapes, peoples, language and , where they exist, its literature and records. She advances in time through her coverage of the islands, from Neolithic Orkney right up to to the coronation of our present king in Westminster, once an iyot or island in the Thames. Every page is packed with a wealth of immensely absorbing detail. For me, living on the Isle of Wight and having been born and brought up in Guernsey, those two sections , including the WW2 experiences in Alderney, were particularly significant. fFom Anglesey to Lindisfarne, from the Western Hebrides to Coney Island, Abinia’s intense and rewarding pace did not falter. From all her references, I especially enjoyed her explication of many of Shakespeare’s lines evoking islands.
It’s a tremendous book, but I do have a criticism which tarnished it for me. Twelve and a half hours is a long listen and I grew tired of Albinia’s unvaried reading tone, but more importantly I wearied of her anti-patriarch stance. Her agenda to give a place and voice to women throughout history is entirely necessary and laudable, but the vehemence of her agenda became tiresome, and gratuitous, even more so when she mixes in her personal experiences such as her journeys and expeditions with women. No topic is safe from servitude in her agenda – even the prized little cowrie shells which as a child I used to collect from the Channel island of Herm are not safe from Albinia’s female-loaded identification! Her personal lament for the accession of our present King seemed merely a platform for her views, upsetting the book’s intellectual discipline .
Overall the book should be an outstanding 5, but I found the insistence on women both in her subjects and in her personal life out of place and overdone.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Linda
- 18-04-24
Interesting facts , Goodresearch
Would have liked more about her journey but some poetic expressions and very informative.
Good read
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