Innovation: The History of England Volume VI

by Peter Ackroyd

Overview

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 Labour 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 post-war 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250861139
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/11/2023
Series:	The History of England , #6
Pages:	528
Sales rank:	196,786
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

PETER ACKROYD is an award-winning novelist, as well as a broadcaster, biographer, poet, and historian. He is the author of the acclaimed London: The Biography, and the History of England series. He holds a CBE for services to literature and lives in London.

Table of Contents

Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
1. The sun never rises
2. Home sweet home
3. The lie of the land
4. Plates in the air
5. The most powerful thing
6. Demands for reform
7. The Terrible Twins
8. What happened to the gentry?
9. Car crazy
10. Little hammers in their muffs
11. The Orange card
12. The black sun
13. Forced to fight
14. The regiment of women
15. The clock stops
16. England’s Irish question
17. Gay as you like
18. Labour at the summit
19. Where is the match?
20. Get on, or get out
21. Crash
22. The rituals of suburbia
23. Now we can have some fun
24. The country of the dole
25. The Fasci
26. The bigger picture
27. The Spanish tragedy
28. This is absolutely terrible
29. The alteration
30. The march of the ants
31. Would you like an onion?
32. The pangs of austerity
33. The cruel real world
34. An old world
35. The washing machine
36. Plays and players
37. Riots of passage
38. North and south
39. Elvis on a budget
40. This sporting life
41. Old lace and arsenic
42. The new brutalism
43. The soothing dark
44. In place of peace
45. Bugger them all
46. The first shot
47. The fall of Heath
48. The slot machine
49. Let us bring harmony
50. Here she comes
51. The Falklands flare-up
52. The Big Bang
53. The Brighton blast
54. Was she always right?
55. Money, money, money
56. The curtain falls
57. The fall of sterling
58. One’s bum year
59. Put up or shut up
60. The moral abyss
61. A chapter of accidents
62. The unhappy year
63. The princess leaves the fairy tale

Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"A wide-ranging, elegant work of scholarship." —Library Journal

Praise for Peter Ackroyd:

"Marvelously erudite and staggeringly industrious." —Los Angeles Times

"For Ackroyd, the past isn't merely past; it's alive." —Boston Globe

"Ackroyd is a medium through which the obscured voices of the past are channeled." —Newsday

"Through it all, the author is a delightful guide. All chroniclers of popular history should be required to study Ackroyd's writing, his methodology, and the totality of his treatment of his subjects." —Kirkus Reviews (starred)

From the Publisher

2021-07-27
In the final installment of his History of England series, the veteran historian tackles the erosion of the British Empire and the modernization of the national economy.

Like the preceding five titles, Ackroyd’s latest is a wide-ranging, elegant work of scholarship covering a century of British history, politics, and culture, from the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 to 2000. During this time period, the old aristocracy contracted as egalitarianism expanded. The Edwardian era, writes the author, saw a “cultural divide in England between those who wanted to shore up the Victorian establishment and those who hoped to build a more egalitarian country from its ruins.” Some of the currents the author follows include the continued decline of the aristocratic class, the growth of the middle class, the mass migrations into cities while grand estates were sold to “new men,” travel’s transitioning from horse to bicycle and motorcar, and the burgeoning understanding that poverty was largely caused by social ills rather than as a result of immorality. Great leaders from Lloyd George to Winston Churchill grasped this new period of political history, in which the “condition of the people” was at the forefront of reform efforts. Along with a minute delineation of political machinations, Ackroyd chronicles the surge of women moving into public roles as suffragists turned more militant; the insoluble debate over Irish Home Rule; and the nationalist sentiments that precipitated the march to war with Germany. Though numerous other authors have covered the war years better, 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.

Kirkus Reviews