INNOVATION: The History of England Volume VI

We are thrilled to have this US first edition 2021 which we have imported of the sixth and final volume in Peter Ackroyd's magnificent History of England series, from the Boer War to the Millennium Dome. With his gift for bringing the obscured voices of the past alive, our erudite and industrious scholar is a delightful guide, writing at the height of his powers. Ackroyd takes readers from the end of the Boer War and the accession of Edward VII to the end of the 20th century, when his great-granddaughter Elizabeth II had been on the throne for almost five decades. It was a century of enormous change, encompassing two Word Wars, four monarchs (Edward VII, George V, George VI and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II), the decline of the aristocracy, and the rise of the Labour Party, women's suffrage, the birth of the National Health Service, the march of suburbia, and the clearance of the slums. It was a period that saw the work of the Bloomsbury Group and T. S. Eliot, of Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin, from the end of the post-war slump to the Technicolor explosion of the 1960s, to free love and punk rock, and from Thatcher to Blair. He also touches on the Irish question, the Spanish tragedy, the riots of passage, Elvis on a budget, this sporting life, the place of peace, the fall of Heath, the Falklands flare-up, the Brighton blast and the Princess who left the fairy tale. There are 33 illustrations including the British Empire Exhibition of 1924, rationing in 1949, Her Majesty's Coronation, the Suez Canal in October 1956 and the premiere of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger. Small remainder mark, 500 magnificent pages, it is a richly peopled tour de force.