The book opens in 1886, as the Empire is poised to celebrate Victoria's golden jubilee, and ends in 1918 at the close of the 'war to end all wars', with England knowing that an era has conclusively ended. It portrays every aspect of the nation's life - political, social, and cultural.

This absorbing narrative history brings into sharp and lively focus a period of immense energy, creativity, and turmoil. The book opens in 1886, as the Empire is poised to celebrate Victoria's golden jubilee, and ends in 1918 at the close of the 'war to end all wars', with England knowing that an era has conclusively ended. It vividly portrays every aspect of the nation's life - political, social, and cultural - carrying the reader from the wretched city slums to thebustling docks and factories, from the grand portals of Westminster to Blackpool's new holiday beach, from the world of the leisured aristocracy to the trenches of the Western Front and the violent politics of the militant suffrage movement.

This is a marvellous book in its breadth, its comprehensiveness and, given its length, the enormous pleasure it has been to read. Necessarily a work of synthesis, it efficiently weaves together telling quotes, examples and statistics to conjure up the late Victorian and Edwardian world.