[DanaC]

I haven't really read any overview books of English history per se, so probably not the best to advise on that. I can suggest some good overviews of particular periods though.

There's a really good book that looks at the period from the end of Roman Britain, to the Norman Conquest, called The Anglo-Saxons, by James campbell, Peter Wormauld and another guy whose name escapes me now. it's more of a cultural investigation than anything though.

My personal favourites for the Anglo-Saxon period are all pretty out of date now. Anything by Michael Wood is accessible and interesting. He's a brilliant historian with a real passion for his subject. He's branched into various areas, but Anglo-Saxon England and the period after the invasion are where he made his name. He's also done some magnificent history documentaries about the period.

For the period after the invasion, I'd say Bartlett's 'England under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 1075-1225. The close of this period is arguably when we became 'English' again, and our monarchs began to identify themselves as Native English (after the loss of French lands under John).

My personal favourite for the history of the Anglo-Saxons is very, very out of date: Sir Frank Stenton's Anglo-Saxon England, first published in 1943 (I think) and revised several times. The edition I read was the 1967 revision. It was one of the first serious history text books I read from start to finish, long before I ever decided to go and study it. I'd got it as a free gift from a book club years before and never done more than looked at the maps (with all the anglo-saxon names). Felt like an achievement to read the whole thing.

It's way off base on a few things (we now know thanks to modern techniques like dna studies and the explosion of archeology) but it's a bloody good read. He treats his subject with care and compassion and occasional humour. A classic text of the period. I have enormous affection for it.

Probably the best overall history would be Simon Schama's History of Britain in three volumes. I haven't read it, but I liked the tv series it came from.