The Time Traveler's Guide to Restoration Britain: A Handbook for Visitors to the Seventeenth Century: 1660-1699

The Time Traveler's Guide to Restoration Britain: A Handbook for Visitors to the Seventeenth Century: 1660-1699

by Ian Mortimer

Narrated by Roger Clark

Unabridged — 20 hours, 16 minutes

The Time Traveler's Guide to Restoration Britain: A Handbook for Visitors to the Seventeenth Century: 1660-1699

The Time Traveler's Guide to Restoration Britain: A Handbook for Visitors to the Seventeenth Century: 1660-1699

by Ian Mortimer

Narrated by Roger Clark

Unabridged — 20 hours, 16 minutes

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Overview

Imagine you could see the smiles of the people mentioned in Samuel Pepys's diary, hear the shouts of market traders, and touch their wares. How would you find your way around? Where would you stay? What would you wear? Where might you be suspected of witchcraft? Where would you be welcome?

This is an up-close-and-personal look at Britain between the Restoration of King Charles II in 1660 and the end of the century. The last witch is sentenced to death just two years before Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica, the bedrock of modern science, is published. Religion still has a severe grip on society and yet some—including the king—flout every moral convention they can find. There are great fires in London and Edinburgh; the plague disappears; a global trading empire develops.

Over these four dynamic decades, the last vestiges of medievalism are swept away and replaced by a tremendous cultural flowering. Why are half the people you meet under the age of twenty-one? What is considered rude? And why is dueling so popular? Ian Mortimer delves into the nuances of daily life to paint a vibrant and detailed picture of society at the dawn of the modern world as only he can.

Editorial Reviews

Christian Science Monitor

"Mortimer has magicked us back to a historical period starting approximately 350 years ago. History comes in many shapes and forms, moved and crafted by the availability of knowledge, by ideology, and shifting modes of inquiry, by angles of approach, by a desire for distance or intimacy. Mortimer is of the latter camp; not the first in the history of history, but a peerless purveyor of its ilk."

Booklist

"Displaying an impressive range and depth of knowledge as well as a writerly instinct for dramatic presentation, Mortimer continues his you-are-there approach to English history. Mortimer deeply immerses the reader in this world, imparting an amazing first-hand feel for what living in the era was like. This is a sure bet for history lovers and readers with a penchant for unusual travelogues."

From the Publisher

"Social historian Mortimer is on to a good thing. His previous, similarly structured books, The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England and The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England, charmed readers, and this latest will do the same." ---Kirkus Starred Review

Booklist

Displaying an impressive range and depth of knowledge as well as a writerly instinct for dramatic presentation, Mortimer continues his you-are-there approach to English history. Mortimer deeply immerses the reader in this world, imparting an amazing first-hand feel for what living in the era was like. This is a sure bet for history lovers and readers with a penchant for unusual travelogues.

From the Publisher - AUDIO COMMENTARY

"Social historian Mortimer is on to a good thing. His previous, similarly structured books, The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England and The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England, charmed readers, and this latest will do the same." —Kirkus Starred Review

The Times (London)

The endlessly inventive Ian Mortimer is the most remarkable medieval historian of our time.

Library Journal - Audio

11/01/2017
Mortimer (The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England) writes as though he has traveled to Restoration Britain himself. With his vivid descriptions of life in the late 1600s, we glimpse hints of the modern age. Yellow cabs and the beginnings of modern transportation and postal systems appear in this time period. The latter half of the 17th century also brings the birth of the insurance industry, banking, and the scientific age. The end to witchcraft trials and the beginning of less strict adherence to religion indicate more change on the horizon. Relying heavily on The Diary of Samuel Pepys and other primary sources, Mortimer builds the world for readers. Narrator Roger Clark infuses just the right touch of dry humor into the author's words. VERDICT Recommended for Anglophiles, historians, and those fascinated with how the world got from there to here. ["An accessible book, entertaining and learned, for professional historians and general readers alike": LJ 4/1/17 review of the Pegasus hc.]—Cheryl Youse, Norman Park, GA

Library Journal

04/01/2017
Historian and novelist Mortimer follows up his bestselling Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England and Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England with a tour of Restoration Britain that encompasses the reigns of Charles II, James II, and William III. The author maintains that "the past is best viewed up close and personally," immersing readers in a 17th-century world they will come to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel through the page. Mortimer begins the tour in London with the Great Fire of 1666 and moves beyond the city to focus on the people, attire, foods, and character of medieval Britain. He draws upon well-known diarists, such as Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, while incorporating accounts by more obscure figures, such as Joseph Pitts of Exeter, a "fourteen-year-old boy who was captured in the English Channel by Barbary pirates in 1678 and sold in the slave markets of Algiers." Reminiscent of cultural historian Johan Huizinga's works, this narrative employs day-to-day experiences to capture the " spirit of the age," demonstrating the growth of modernity in Britain in the 17th century. VERDICT An accessible book, entertaining and learned, for professional historians and general readers alike.—Mark Spencer, Brock Univ., St. Catharines, Ont.

APRIL 2018 - AudioFile

Mortimer’s guide to Britain in the late 1600s, while dense with information, mostly avoids dryness or dullness, strongly assisted here by Clark’s personable and intelligent reading. Clark’s British-accented voice is deep, craggily resonant, and likeable. He takes on the role of the time traveler’s amiable companion, conveying the sense of strangeness that a real time-traveler might experience, and lending nuanced reactions to the material: surprise, amusement, sympathy, dismay. He signals the occasional joke by tone and pauses, without overemphasis. His reading is energetic, bringing vitality even to occasional long lists of facts and statistics. Much of the book is highly interesting, but the listener is carried happily through even the drier sections by Clark’s energy, spirit, and good cheer. W.M. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2017-02-06
The latest guidebook to England's past from the renowned historian.Social historian Mortimer (Human Race: Ten Centuries of Change on Earth, 2015, etc.) is on to a good thing. His previous, similarly structured books, The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England (2009) and The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England (2013), charmed readers, and this latest will do the same. As usual, great men and events make only a fleeting appearance because the author is more concerned with everyday lives: in this case, the lives of Britons of all classes between 1660 and 1700. London aside, demographics were dismal. Britain's population rose steadily from the 1400s until the present day, except during the Restoration, when it declined. Europe was passing through the Little Ice Age; crops often failed, and food prices rose. Britain endured its last famine in the 1690s. All historians stress that their era brought revolutionary changes, and Mortimer is no exception. England executed its last witch in 1685, and Isaac Newton's Principia, the book marking the dawn of the scientific age, appeared in 1687. Innovations of the time included insurance, journalism, statistics, and modern (as opposed to merchant) banking. Personal checks also made their first appearance. Aware that historical dietary and hygienic habits retain a special fascination, Mortimer does not disappoint. The healthiest food remained meat. Privies were a low priority; a chronic complaint from great houses and even royal palaces was people "leaving their excrements in every corner, in chimneys, studies, coal houses, cellars." In the century since the author's Elizabethan Guide, London's population had quadrupled to over 400,000, but there were still no sewers or running water. Garbage removal remained in the hands of private entrepreneurs, although a heavy rain worked better. Readers will finish this third in a delightful series of bottom-up histories hoping Mortimer has his sights set on Georgian England.

Product Details

BN ID: 2940170631803
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Publication date: 08/15/2017
Edition description: Unabridged
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