| Title | : | Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0156302861 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780156302869 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 576 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1978 |
Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat Reviews
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This book is one of the best on the late Victorian Empire that I have read, including The Last Lion, a book I have a guilty affection for. The blend of wry humor about a very serious empire and the knowing respect for true heroes is winning. The knowledge of details is wonderful. When I read it over over the past week, I was struck by the superiority of Morris' style to that of other great historical writers. I love this book.
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Conceptually weak, yet readable, popular history of the British empire, this 3rd book in a 3-part series deals with the last years of the 19th century through the middle part of the 20 century, focusing mainly on geopolitical strategy, armed conflict, leadership figures, and popular sentiment within the United Kingdom. The book is a case study in the historian as rhetorical stylist; a conceptual understanding of the period is occluded by the aestheticization that the author seems to have a hard time resisting, and which makes for enjoyable, if not especially acadmically rigorous, reading.
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Even in approximately 1500 pages of Jan Morris's Pax Britannica, the author was only able to touch on the high points. While mentioned, there are no detailed descriptions of, for instance, the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the massacre at Amritsar in 1919, the Mau Mau rebellion, the fall of Singapore or any of the other many battles, invasions or rebellions that took place within the years of the British Empire. Instead of a simple accumulation of facts and events, Jan Morris has accomplished something much better. This author makes you know the Empire as if you had lived within it for all of its 200+ years and she does this through a constant repetition of the day to day lives and activities of the British people who built it. We are introduced to them through the places they come from, the schools which educated them, their class (mostly, upper middle. Few upper-class men and women went in for Empire building), the clothes they wore, the things they purchased for their voyages. We travel with them on the ships they took, the trains they built and ran all over the world. We eat what they ate, live in the houses they built, the clubs they joined and they way they treated their servants. We learn their eccentricities and the prejudices they carried with them. We follow their adventures and the greatest of them all, the adventure of the Empire itself.
Pax Britannica is a great achievement, not because by the end of it you will know all the facts about the Victorian age or the Empire itself but because you will come to more or less understand it as they themselves did. It doesn't matter if you approve of The British Empire or not. This is mainly a story about people, rulers, and the people they ruled. This last volume tells of the end and how it was met. The world has changed and I doubt that there will ever be again an Empire such as this one where the many are ruled by the few. Their motives were not always pure but, in the main, these men and women left the world better for having been there. The idea itself was flawed but the motives of most were well intended. -
Morris does it again. A great way to end the trilogy on the British empire. The author adopts a « snippets » approach once more broaching a variety of subjects from the historical facts, to architecture at the end of the empire or it’s relation to technology. As always Morries keeps a place of honour for the empire builder of the time and writes vivid portraits of men and women that shaped the British empire at the end of its life and whose name are now mostly forgotten.
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The end of the Empire is also the end of the trilogy, and a wonderful read it was. This volume starts at peak Empire (Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1897) and tells the tale of the plateau (to 1945, to be generous) and then the quite quick decline.
There are many ways of telling history. This is the way of someone who was moving to a quieter life in 1966, and had by then acquired a lifetime of travel and experience, and the skill of a professional author to make the result as readable as it could possibly be. If, from time to time, the attitudes of an ex-officer of the 9th Lancers shine through, these never predominate. Every generation needs history re-told, but this is the version that I first read in the 1970s and am comfortable with.
The Empire spread material progress over a large part of the world. This could have happened in many possible ways, but what happened is that the people from a small island off the NW of Europe ruled the seas and colonised much of the land, seeking primarily glory (p 547). Why did this search for glory suddenly evaporate? It is difficult to believe that Britain's relative poverty was the main factor -- apart from Brazil, even poorer Portugal never got much from its colonies but kept going for a long time. So the Empire coasted for a while and then expired rather suddenly and quietly, despite small wars in Kenya and (then) Malaya.
The British Empire was by no means the worst of Empires. For instance, it never was as brutal as that of the Czars, Commissars and Presidents of Russia and left a larger legacy.
Some delightful pencil sketches, not least of WSC (p545) -
This has been a most satisfying journey, this third episode returning to the sense of motion that started us off in the first book. The recipe is rich, but light, a series of essays, illuminated by anecdote and footnotes, often with little personal touches as the times touched the authors own. I'm reading it at time when the 'European' Britain that is emerging in this volume is now changing again, perhaps the impetus will be to seek global fulfillment through partnership rather than empire? Perhaps the tide of events will sweep another way. I feel better prepared with the knowledge and compassion these books have encouraged.
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Final volume of the trilogy, covering the Empire from the 1897 Jubilee to the death of Churchill in 1965. As in the other volumes, Jan covers the good and the bad in the Empire in a surprising level of everyday detail. One of the best parts of these books is the footnotes, where she gives little family detail about the protagonists or what happened since. Or what happened when she visited the locations concerned.
The level of research and travel required for these books must have been huge. I'm jealous....
Fascinating stuff. I've read all three several times. -
A tremendously creative, well-researched and insightful book. I found myself not wanting to finish, as the book finally started to close the curtain on the British Empire.
This book, and the previous book in the series (Pax Britannica) are must-reads for anyone wanting to grasp the Empire. It is witty, expansive, glorious and ever so mournful. Morris does not shy away from exposing the glories and atrocities of empire, and paints a vivid picture of one of humanity's greatest triumphs and shames. -
As Morris herself concedes, this is a somewhat ‘tattered conclusion’ to the recession of a confusing and contradictory chapter of British history. It is, though, perhaps unlike the two volumes that precede it, a romping page-turner. What an extraordinary, eventful period in British history, and one that is remarkably lucky to have such a poetic hand tracing its wars, negotiations and treaties. Few writers could produce an account this thorough, readable, funny and emotive. She will truly be missed.
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Jan Morris is always a delight. She is definitely on my list of people I would most like to have dinner with. This is not really a work of serious history, but then few books of serious history include footnotes about the author meeting the pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem at the wedding of the King of Libya.
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Took me 2 years to read the trilogy. Wonderful detail. As I am somewhat interested in the history of British Empire I found these books excellent. I really enjoyed James/Jan's style of writing also. For those who want a history of the Empire I would highly recommend these 3 books.
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A colossal work of history. While the author completed writing it in 1974, it is still relateable as India has so many quintessential relics of the Raj deeply embedded in our daily lives, 75 years on.
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A bit unusual, unlike the normal history books. The author wrote like it’s a diary.. quite sensational at times.
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Not a quick read, but very interesting, packed with detail and lightened by occasional anecdotes.
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Such great prose and so opinionated. I don’t necessarily agree with Morris’s Eurocentric perspective but it’s up front and so well tendered
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4.5
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One of the best things I've ever read, along with "Heaven's Command" and "Pax Britannica," the first two books of the trilogy about the British empire. These books are as interesting, well written, and exciting as the best fiction. I'mdefiniely going to read more of the author's books.
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Jan Morris's contribution to the history of the British Empire will only be truly measured as future generations turn to a series of books that will surely stand the test of time. This trilogy is a supreme example of how to marry the past with the present, to allow the triumphs and follies behind us to illuminate the way forward for those with eyes to read and independent minds to think. Perhaps sensing this, she writes, "... the post-imperial generation is passing by, and the mass of the British people know little of their lost Empire, and care still less."
And yet within these pages there is so much worth understanding. In Farewell the Trumpets there are great names in the foreground: T E Lawrence, Gandhi, Smuts and Churchill, politicians, statesmen and generals. Lesser mortals, too, for not the least of Morris's gifts is her ability to portray a person in an anecdote, evoke a mood with a poem, reawaken a moment in time with a musty cutting. There is ample humour for Morris loves a good joke. Most of the places of which she writes she has visited, many of the people she has met. And just once, the meticulous, even-handed historian gives way to the proud writer, and then only in a characteristically wry footnote: "The imperturbable Mufti settled after the war in Egypt - where I met him, I cannot resist recording, at the wedding of the King of Libya."
These three books represent a decade of travel, investigation, exploration and conversation. Five stars do them scant justice. -
I really enjoyed this Pax Britannica trilogy (including book one Heaven's Command and book two Pax Britannica). It was fascinating history told in conversational manner and, although I am not a historian, I thought it was fair. As C.S. Lewis wrote: "That is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended—civilizations are built up—excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always bring the selfish and cruel people to the top and it all slides back into misery and ruin." When I read this quote, it made me think of the Pax Britannica. With its roots in Wilberforce, the abolition of slavery and the like, it seemed as thought Britain really made the world better through the reign of Queen Victoria. It seemed to turn to arrogance and greed, though, in so many ways. The trilogy does not pronouce judgement, but describes the beauty and flaws, almost as if in eulogy and at wake, where tears and laughter are joined by respect for the life now dead.
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Jan Morris is a brilliant historian. She traces the decline and fall of the British empire in meticulous, insightful prose. Churchill himself could never truly accept that decline and resisted it throughout the second World War. Hindsight is necessary for the final and most insightful interpretation of history. It's hard to live through a period as Churchill did and see it clearly, even though he was a brilliant historian himself. Born in 1874, he was an imperialist to his core and could never overcome his belief in that system.
Morris has a unique, deeply personal style, that infuses the book with her own personality and sardonic sense of humor, often reflected in her footnotes, which are every bit as interesting as the text.
From her Pax Britannica Trilogy to her brilliant travel writings, I've enjoyed every word of Morris's books. -
A beautiful tour of the British empire and a summary of the last decades of its history. The prose is less beautiful then that of its prequel in the Pax Britannica series, 'The Climax of Empire' which at times read like one long poem. Yet it is still a very beautifully written book by any standard. If the aim of its prequel was to capture the feel of empire, 'Farewell the Trumpets' instead has more of a focus on details and aims to chronicle the events leading to the empires decline and eventual transformation in to the lose association of nations now known as the commonwealth .
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Very nicely done book, prompted me to purchase the first two of the "triptych." A rather winsome account of the collapse of the British Empire. I liked it because the author had visited the places of interest and conveyed imaginatively what it was like to experience the gradual retreat of the Empire.
The second book of the trilogy has the author listed as "James" Morris. Apparently he changed his sex between books. This caused me some confusion.
