Through the centuries Britain has suffered from a continuing series of invasions by men eager to occupy the country or to take over its government. The fact that any invader of Britain must cross at least twenty-one miles of water has not prevented these attempts.

Ronald Syme describes here seven of the most famous invasions of Britain. The first three successful groups of invaders—the Romans, the Anglos, Saxons, Jutes, and Vikings, and the Normans of William the Conqueror—landed, met with heroic resistance, and took the country. Two of Mr. Syme's invaders the Duke of Monmouth and Prince Charles Edward Stuart, depended, fatally, upon raising support after they had slipped inland.

Thereafter, the great invasions of Britain all were defeated before the attackers reached the British coast. The first of these, the Spanish Armada of 1588, was beaten off by Hawkins, Drake, and Frobisher in an exhausting battle along the English Channel. Two centuries later the navy managed to prevent Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion force from ever putting to sea. Finally, in 1940, Britain was saved from an all-out German invasion.

An absorbing account of some memorable events in English history.

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