Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Preview
  • The Britannias

  • An Island Quest
  • By: Alice Albinia
  • Narrated by: Alice Albinia
  • Length: 12 hrs and 32 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (5 ratings)

£0.00 for first 30 days

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

The Britannias

By: Alice Albinia
Narrated by: Alice Albinia
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

The Britannias tells the story of Britain's islands and how they are woven into its collective cultural psyche. From Neolithic Orkney to modern-day Thanet, Alice Albinia explores the furthest reaches of Britain's island topography, once known (wrote Pliny) by the collective term, Britanniae. Sailing over borders, between languages and genres, trespassing through the past to understand the present, this book knocks the centre out to foreground neglected epics and subversive voices.

The ancient British mythology of islands ruled by women runs like a secret, hidden river through the literature of this land - from Roman colonial-era reports to early Welsh poetry, Renaissance drama to Restoration utopias - transcending and subverting the most male-fixated of ages. The Britannias looks far back into the past for direction and solace, while searching for new meaning about women's status in the body politic. Boldly upturning established truths about Britain, it pays homage to the islands' beauty, independence and their suppressed or forgotten histories.

©2023 Alice Albinia (P)2023 Penguin Audio
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Listeners also enjoyed...

In Search of Angels cover art
Orcadia cover art
Mysterious Polynesia: The Myths, Legends, and Mysteries of the Polynesians cover art
Cwen cover art
Epic Continent cover art
Colonialism cover art
Twilight Cities cover art
To the Island of Tides cover art
The Story of the British Isles in 100 Places cover art
Strange Tales of Scotland cover art
Scotland cover art
Clarissa's England cover art

Critic reviews

'A dazzlingly brilliant book. Travelling by boat, swimming through kelp, riding on a fishing trawler, Alice Albinia takes us on an extraordinary journey around the British isles, revealing a liquid past where women ruled and mermaids sang and tracing the sea-changes of her own heart.' (Hannah Dawson)

What listeners say about The Britannias

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    2
  • 4 Stars
    3
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    0
  • 4 Stars
    5
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    3
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

So interesting historical facts and social status of island with the feminine role woven in.

Fascinating book feel like need to listen again to allow everything to sink in. Fabulous and engaging

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Packed fill of interest but flawed


Alice Albinia must surely have elected this loudly resonating name for herself! Albinia has lived abroad, travelled widely and her subject knowledge is phenomenal. In whichever part of the world she has become established – and here it is in fifteen of Britain’s off-shore islands - she has fully immersed herself in it. In The Britannias she delves deeply into the history of each island, its culture, beliefs, social structures, myths, seascapes, peoples, language and , where they exist, its literature and records. She advances in time through her coverage of the islands, from Neolithic Orkney right up to to the coronation of our present king in Westminster, once an iyot or island in the Thames. Every page is packed with a wealth of immensely absorbing detail. For me, living on the Isle of Wight and having been born and brought up in Guernsey, those two sections , including the WW2 experiences in Alderney, were particularly significant. fFom Anglesey to Lindisfarne, from the Western Hebrides to Coney Island, Abinia’s intense and rewarding pace did not falter. From all her references, I especially enjoyed her explication of many of Shakespeare’s lines evoking islands.

It’s a tremendous book, but I do have a criticism which tarnished it for me. Twelve and a half hours is a long listen and I grew tired of Albinia’s unvaried reading tone, but more importantly I wearied of her anti-patriarch stance. Her agenda to give a place and voice to women throughout history is entirely necessary and laudable, but the vehemence of her agenda became tiresome, and gratuitous, even more so when she mixes in her personal experiences such as her journeys and expeditions with women. No topic is safe from servitude in her agenda – even the prized little cowrie shells which as a child I used to collect from the Channel island of Herm are not safe from Albinia’s female-loaded identification! Her personal lament for the accession of our present King seemed merely a platform for her views, upsetting the book’s intellectual discipline .

Overall the book should be an outstanding 5, but I found the insistence on women both in her subjects and in her personal life out of place and overdone.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Interesting facts , Goodresearch

Would have liked more about her journey but some poetic expressions and very informative.
Good read

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!