Like celebrities in Daniel Boorstin’s celebrated definition, some years – 1066, 1492, 1914 – are famous for being famous. Just published is Christopher Lee’s 1603: A Turning Point in British History, which follows John Wills’s Global History of 1688. James Chandler’s magisterial ‘commentary on a moment in the history of a literary culture’, England in 1819, repeats for its title th ...
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