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MJ
Harper
The
History of Britain Revealed (Amazon.com)
The
History of Britain Revealed (Amazon.co.uk)
What an audacious little book. I was suspicious from the outset...
no author biography, no index, and no bibliography. This had to
be the ravings of a madman. However, it's really a tight little
essay, and rather than revealing any new 'factual' material, instead
manages to convincingly confront the accepted mythologies of the
origins of British peoples and their languages.The History
of Britain Revealed provokes more questions than it provides
answers.
The reader is thrown straight into chapter 1. 'An Englishman's Home',
a rant about the prevailing myths about the Anglo-Saxons, and how
they managed to completely 'replace' the language of England with
their own. Alarm bells went on... it's a rant, I thought, albeit
an amusing one. It will endure for a chapter or two, then probably
peter out into vague claims and unsubstantiated evidence.
I was wrong. The author, for all their sniping at academia and
unexpected vague personal references, has employed pure logic to
dissect the conceits of history, and how these beliefs are controlled
by that old fortean chestnut, cognitive dissonance as well as nationalist
agendas.
In just 140 pages, Harper manages to attack the Oxford English
Dictionary (it's a mess), argue that neither Old or Middle English
ever really existed, and show that most of what we believe about
our cultures is based on how historians and linguists are constantly
backing each other up, just so no one will be accused of being wrong.
Is English really a Germanic language? If so, why is is full of
Latin? Is Latin based on French, instead of the other way around?
Out of a list of countries that include Portugal, Spain, France
and Italy, why are the Anglo-Saxons the only invaders, who unlike
the the Visigoths, Vandals, Arabs, Burgundians, Danes, Normans,
Ostrogoths, Lombards and Franks to invade a country - Britain, in
their case and effect a permanent change on
the language.
Whether you agree with Harper or not, this is, in fact, a very
fortean book. In starts off with a big bag of beliefs, and ends
up with a box of maybes.
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