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:	242,121
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