对于一个不了解英国历史的人来说，本片是很好的教材。本片再现了英国文明的成长历程，从巨石文化的新石器时代到辉煌的伊丽莎白时代，穿越17世纪暴乱的国内战争到日不落大不列颠帝国。这是一个生动的、有些情景可以说是血腥的故事。《A History of Britain》由15个章节组成，是喜欢英式英语发音的人士必须收藏的一套材料。

　　第02章 Conquest 征服（1000——1087）

　　九个小时的战役（the Battle of Hastings）之后，一切都改变了，诺曼人取代了盎鲁——萨克逊人，英国从此走上另一条道路。当法国人到来时，Harold解除了他哥哥Tostig的武装。他率领他的最后的部队向南冲锋了187英里。最后他在Senlac山上面对着向他冲来的威廉的骑士和弓箭手。1066年的圣诞节那天，威廉登上了英格兰的王位，英国成为诺曼人帝国的一部分，而威廉也成为第一个王。

　　英语字幕文本：

　　It was the hand of God that decided the outcome of battles, the fate of nations and the life or death of kings.

　　Everyone knew that.

　　It was winter, the season of frost and death.

　　A king lay dying.

　　His name was Edward the Confessor.

　　He was dying childless and it wasn't obvious who would succeed him.

　　As there was no heir, many thought they should be the next king, including foreign princes like Duke William of Normandy.

　　Among those gathered round the bed of the dying Saxon king was the next most powerful man in England, Harold Godwineson and he thought the crown would look well on his head.

　　He was hoping for a sign that King Edward felt the same way.

　　Then Edward stretched out his hand and touched Harold.

　　But was he giving him a blessing or a curse? Was this the hand of God making Harold king?

　　Nobody knew for sure, but Harold had no qualms.

　　He seized the crown.

　　The question now was for how long would he keep it?

　　Then, in the April sky, the hand of God showed itself as a comet, a hairy star, and everyone knew this was no blessing but an evil omen.

　　The year was 1066.

　　Historians like a quiet life and usually they get it.

　　For the most part, history moves at a glacial pace, working its changes subtly.

　　In Britain we like to think there's something about our history, like our climate, our landscape, that's naturally moderate, not given to earthquakes and revolutions.

　　But there are times and places when history, British history, comes at you with a rush, violent, decisive, bloody - a truckload of trouble knocking you down, wiping out everything that gives you your bearings: Law, custom, loyalty and language.

　　And this is one of those places.

　　I know it doesn't look like the site of a national trauma.

　　These days it looks more suitable for a county fair than a mass slaughter.

　　But this is the battlefield of Hastings, and here one kind of England was annihilatedand another kind of England was set up in its place.

　　Some historians say that for most people of England Hastings didn't matter that much, that 1066 was mostly a matter of replacing Saxon lords with Norman knights.

　　Peasants still ploughed their fields and paid taxes to the king, prayed to avoid poverty and pestilenceand watched the seasons roll round.

　　But the everyday can rub shoulders with the catastrophic.

　　The grass grew green again, but there were bones beneath the buttercups and an entire governing class of the English had been dispossessed, their men, land and animals taken from them and given as spoils to the victorious foreigners.

　　You could survive and still be English but now you belonged to an inferior race, the conquered.

　　You lived in England but it was no longer your country.

　　Anglo-Saxon England was no stranger to invasions.

　　Viking raids had been part of life for a century, but since the days of Alfred the Great, it was a country stable enough to soak them up.