Description
Book SynopsisG. R. Searle''s absorbing narrative history breaks conventional chronological barriers to carry the reader from England in 1886, the apogee of the Victorian era with the nation poised to celebrate the empress queen''s golden jubilee, to 1918, as the ''war to end all wars'' drew to a close leaving England to come to terms with its price - above all in terms of human life, but also in the general sense that things would never be the same again.This was an age of extremes: a period of imperial pomp and circumstance, with a political elite preoccupied with display and ceremony, alongside the growing cult of the simple life; the apogee of imperialism with its idealization of war on the one hand, the start of the Labour Party, a socialist renaissance, and welfare politics on the other; and a radical challenging of traditional gender stereotypes in the face of the prevailing cult of masculinity.Under Professor Searle''s historical microscope, all the details of daily life spring into sharp re
Trade ReviewThis book deserves to become a standard work. It is reliable, lucid, even-handed and up-to-date ... Nowhere has Edwardian social history been so revealingly synthesised. * The Spectator *
A masterful, lucidly written and well proportioned survey over the whole range of national life. * Paul Smith, Times Literary Supplement *
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. * Peter Catterall, History Today *
Table of ContentsIntroduction ; PART I. ENGLAND IN 1886 ; 1. Nationalism and Nationality ; 2. Generation and Gender ; 3. Social Identities ; 4. Governance and Politics ; PART II. LATE VICTORIAN ENGLAND 1886-1899 ; 5. Home Rule and the Politics of Unionism ; 6. The Social Question: Conflict and Stability 1886-1899 ; 7. Politics and the Social Question 1886-1899 ; 8. Uneasy Dominion: Britain under Challenge ; 9. The Boer War 1899-1902 ; PART III. EDWARDIAN ENGLAND ; 10. The Unionist Project 1902-1905 ; 11. The Liberal Party and Social Welfare Politics ; 12. The Years of 'Crisis' 1908-1914 ; 13. The Road to War ; PART IV. LEISURE, CULTURE, AND SCIENCE ; 14. The Pursuit of Pleasure ; 15. Art and Culture ; 16. Science and Learning ; PART V. THE GREAT WAR ; 17. The Loss of Innocence 1914-1916 ; 18. Tragedy and Triumph 1916-1918 ; 19. The Patriotic Experience ; 20. War and the Reshaping of Identities ; Chronology ; List of Cabinets and General Elections ; Bibliography ; Index
