Little Englanders

''For sheer entertainment, this rollicking account of Britain before the Great War is hard to beat, brimming as it is with swindlers, murderers and charlatans, imperialist fantasies and saucy innuendos'' ''History Books of the Year'', The Times''The very best sort of panoramic portrait'' David Kynaston''The Edwardians have long been the lost decade of British history, yet they are that history at its climax. Alwyn Turner sets the record straight, bringing its characters, strains and stresses brilliantly to life'' Simon JenkinsWhen Queen Victoria died in 1901 it was the end of an era. Many later remembered the era that followed as the long afternoon of an empire where the sun never set. Yet the Edwardians knew the country was in a state of flux; the seismic change that they felt would transform modern Britain forever.In Little Englanders, Alwyn Turner reconsiders the Edwardian era as a time of profound social change, bringing their history alive through music halls and male beauty contests, the 1908 Summer Olympics and the real Peaky Blinders. In this colourful, detailed and hugely entertaining social history, Turner shows that, though the golden Victorian age was in the past, the birth of modern Britain was only just beginning.