This Sceptred Isle: Empire: The Classic BBC Radio History
About this audiobook
Christopher Lee's highly-acclaimed and award-winning BBC Radio 4 history of the British Empire.
Britain had the biggest empire the world has ever known. At one time a quarter of the global land mass was British. Over a third of the world was insured at Lloyds. At his coronation, more than 400 million people saluted George V. Truly, the sun never set on this historical phenomenon. Whatever the day, whatever the hour, somewhere on the globe, the empire worked and played the British game, often absurdly so.
BBC Radio 4's monumental history of Britain tells the story of the British Empire from its earliest beginnings through the years when British influence grew steadily around the globe, years when Britain took full advantage of the technical advances of its industrial revolution.
Here are the origins of the modern nations of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and of the ways in which British influence has affected, for better or for worse, nations such as India, Sri Lanka, and China. Here are the stories, not always happy and glorious, of Captain James Cook, Mungo Park, Warren Hastings, Sir Stamford Raffles, and David Livingstone.
The story of the British Empire is one of enormous personalities, adventure, scientific and maritime development, and the building of one of the most complex international administrations the world has ever seen.
©2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P) 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd
About the author
Christopher Lee (Author)
Christopher Lee (1941-2021) was a British writer, historian and broadcaster, best known for writing the BBC radio documentary series This Sceptred Isle.
Lee's career began when, in his twenties, he re-started his education, reading history at London University, after previously being expelled from school and running away to sea in an old tramp steamer. He later joined the BBC as a defence and foreign affairs correspondent and was posted to Moscow and the Middle East. Leaving his career in journalism for academia, Lee was the first Quatercentenary Fellow in Contemporary History and Gomes Lecturer at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He went on to research the history of ideas at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Lee is the originator and writer of the BBC Radio 4 trilogy This Sceptred Isle, which recounts the history of Britain and the British Empire from the Romans to the 20th century. His recent books include the three accompanying volumes of This Sceptred Isle, the autobiographic Eight Bells and Top Masts, which tells the story of his time as a deck boy and his circumnavigation of the globe, his The Bath Detective thriller trilogy, Monarchy, Past, present... and future? and Viceroys: The Creation of the British, illustrated by his wife.
He is also the writer of more than 100 Radio 4 plays and series including The House, starring Timothy West, Julian Glover and Isla Blair, Colvil & Soames, starring Christopher Benjamin and Amanda Redman, Our Brave Boys, starring Martin Jarvis and Fiona Shaw, and the Los Angeles production of his The Trial of Walter Raleigh, which Rosalind Ayres produced with Michael York in the title role. His play A Pattern in Shrouds was broadcast on Radio 4 in the summer of 2009 and deals with the consequences of the assassination of the Queen's uncle, Lord Mountbatten in 1979. In 2013 the BBC also ran his play Air Force One, which questioned the events during the 90 minutes between the assassination of President Kennedy and swearing in of Lyndon B Johnson aboard the presidential plane.
Anna Massey (Reader)
Anna Massey has been a successful actress for fifty years. Her career has spanned a wide range. In the cinema she has worked with many of the great directors, including Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Powell, Otto Preminger and Fred Zinneman. But perhaps her favourite performances have been in the theatre - among those being The Miracle Worker, Heartbreak House, The Importance of Being Earnest, and Mary Stuart. For television she won a BAFTA Award for her performance in Anita Brookner's Hotel du Lac, and she starred very memorably in the title role of Gwen John, and also in Trollope's He Knew He Was Right. On radio her voice is familiar to many from plays and documentaries, most recently narrating the history of Britain in This Sceptred Isle, which has brought her a whole new audience.
