The sixth and final volume in Peter Ackroyd’s magnificent History of England series, from the Boer War to the Millenium Dome.
Innovation brings Peter Ackroyd’s History of England to a triumphant close. Ackroyd takes readers from the end of the Boer War and the accession of Edward VII to the end of the twentieth 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 world wars, four monarchs (Edward VII, George V, George VI, and the Queen), the decline of the aristocracy and the rise of the Labor Party, women’s suffrage, the birth of the NHS, 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 postwar slump to the Technicolor explosion of the 1960s, to free love and punk rock, and from Thatcher to Blair.
A vividly readable, richly peopled tour de force, Innovation is Peter Ackroyd writing at the height of his powers.
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“Ackroyd is at his finest weaving together the cultural fabric of the nation, describing the ‘hungry thirties,’ the establishment of the postwar welfare state during an austere time, Britain’s uneasy rapport with Europe, and the triumph of British icons such as Twiggy, Margaret Thatcher, Princess Diana, and Harry Potter. Thorough, readable history by a seasoned researcher and author.”
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Kirkus Reviews