Disappointing

Some very poor pronunciation from the narrator made this a frustrating listen.
I think I’d have much preferred reading this book myself.

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For a history of early Scotland, press 1...

I can't say for certain if I've heard Mr Vickery on corporate answerphone messages before, but based on the way he read this, I would wager as much. Eloquent but robotic.

The book itself is more like a scrapbook than a traditional history book. It would seem the main thing to know about pre-medieval Scotland is that there's only so much we can ever know.

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illuminating

The first millennium in Scottish history is so shrouded in mythos that it's hard to find an accurate telling. I found this book informative, even with the occasional mispronounced place names.

Can't wait to go out and explore a bit more of my local history now I know.

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Vague and disappointing

The books most common words were, maybe, possibly, perhaps etc. It was light on facts and heavy in conjecture. Despite just enjoying another of his book I wouldn't recommend this one.

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Worth a go

This is an audiobook that can’t be rushed , it’s well structured and really is full on nuggets .
There is so much information I’d recommend an hour at a time , and then you realise what you have took in.

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A complex history made accessible to the amateur history enthusiast!

Clarkson manages the near impossible in this well researched, well read and well written audible book. Given the lack of reliable source material for the period and their inherent difficulty in interpretation the author against all odds somehow manages to produce a chronological, easily readable, narrative history which manages to make the period come alive to the listener. The difficult nature of the Irish Annals, the Pictish King Lists, Hagiographies and dare I say it, The Venerable Bede is like putty in his hands. I would thoroughly recommend this audible book as a starting point for anyone interested in the early medieval past of the North of Britain.

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3 people found this helpful

Good book. Less good narration.

Tim Clarkson has written a snappy history of ‘Scotland’ in the first millennium AD. For that he is to be thanked and admired. Yes, it sometimes feels like an endless list of regional Kings who were anointed one minute and killed the next, but if he was to fill in the details the book would have been huge. I own some of those enormous 1,000 page history books and I know their size is very off-putting. What this book has done for me is whet my appetite enough to purchase a series of (also relatively short) books on specific parts of Scottish history from Edinburgh University Press. I am grateful for the inspiration to do so.
As for the narration: I think I will avoid David Vickery in future (nice guy though he undoubtedly is). The problem is he creates his own punctuation with his breathing technique. Typically, he reads half a sentence, stops and takes a breath, then starts the second half of the sentence as if it is a new sentence and runs it onto the first half of the next sentence. And lo and behold, a completely new (often nonsensical) sentence is created. He doesn’t just do it sometimes - he does it all the time. It is infuriating and relies on the listener holding the second half of the previous sentence in short term memory so it can be joined back up with its missing sibling and the correct sentence reconstructed. Plus, he really does say ‘Firth of Firth’ at one point, thus proving he has no editor and the producer doesn’t listen to the recording.

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