The Spoils of Time

A World History from the Dawn of Civilization Through the Early Renaissance

By: C. V. Wedgwood

Narrated by: Charlton Griffin

The Spoils of Time is a concise history of the world in nine chapters, tracing the prehistoric beginnings of early man’s halting steps towards civilization and ending sometime around 1500. The scope is vast, with Wedgwood’s scholarship spanning all the continents. As the author states, her purpose was to create a continuous narrative of human history for her own pleasure and to find out for herself what, if any, interlacing relations might hold us together. Her trip through the annals of time is a clearly delineated path of societal turbulence, invasion, cultural flowering, civil collapse, and devastating plagues…all seemingly driven by religious and philosophical inquiry from some inexhaustible source. From every part of our earth have come men and empires which somehow coalesced in spite of themselves. They have left behind them the dusty, rusty relics of stone, iron, and imagery from which C.V. Wedgwood has created a swirling narrative of humanity in perpetual motion. And as she concludes, the global narrative seems to have no firmly connective tissue and no persistent logic behind its magnificent obsessions.

©1985 Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford (P)2025 Audio Connoisseur