42. The History of England by Lord Macaulay (abridged and annotated edition by Hugh Trevor-Roper)

I found this book in a free box in the community center where I sometimes play basketball.  It seemed a bit daunting, but interesting.  Now I wish I actually had the full edition and I may one day track it down and read it.  The full edition is roughly four times the size as this one.  Trevor-Roper does his usual solid job of putting the history into context and then picking out all the sections dealing with the Glorious Revolution that kicked James III off the throne, put William III on and established the foundation of England's strong parliament that would lead to its dominance in the world.  I had probably learned much of this in high school, but completely forgotten all of it but a few fleeting references.  This book was really informative.  Furthermore, it was also quite enjoyable.  Macaulay really could write and he has that great British characteristic of not holding back at all in his critiques and doing so in a readable way.  Trevor-Roper reveals all his biases and even where he is straight up erroneous and these make him ripping apart various Tory historical figures all the more fun.

Some great quotes:

It must be remembered that, though concord is in itself better than discord, discord may indicate a better state of things than is indicated by concord. Calamity and peril often force men to combine. Prosperity and security often encourage them to separate.

In revolutions, men live fast: the experience of years is crowded into hours: old habits of thought and action are violently broken; novelties, which at first sight inspire dread and disgust, become in a few days familiar, endurable, attractive.

Indeed, during the century which followed the Revolution, the inclination of an English Protestant to trample on the Irishry was generally proportioned to the zeal which he professed for political liberty in the abstract.  If he uttered any expression of compassion for the majority oppressed by the minority, he might be safely set down as a bigoted Tory and High Churcham

Also, a note on the length of time it took me to read this (astute readers will notice that it has been a month since my last post).  Part of it is that the book is long and there is a real slog in the middle where he goes into the mire of religious arguments of the non-jurors and their counterparts (another example of the absolute stupidity of religion where Catholic leaders in England had to twist themselves in knots to figure out how accepting or not accepting William as sovereign could fit into their interpretation of the bible).  But really, I could have finished it much faster but this July has been warm weather, Fantasia film festival and just hanging out in Montreal.