After the Victorians - Hardcover

Wilson, A.N.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0091794846 ISBN 13: 9780091794842

Publisher: Hutchinson, 2005

Synopsis

How did Britain decline? A.N. Wilson goes in search of an answer in his masterly follow-up to his bestselling The Victorians.

In The Victorians, the author told the story of Great Britain in her pre-eminence. It ended with Britain as the mightiest, richest nation on earth, possessed of a huge empire. That book, however, is full of forebodings and harbingers of disaster. This follow-up book is the story of the decline of Britain — and with it, the decline of many of the things that Victorian Britain stood for. Furthermore, Wilson will show, the seeds of its undoing had been there from the beginning.

As in The Victorians, this book has a panoramic sweep, building up a portrait of the age — the Communist Revolution, two world wars, the Spanish Civil War, and the unstoppable growth of America as a dominant world power and the beginnings of the Cold War. This is the era in which Britain was sidelined from its importance in world politics. Alongside this is the story of the beginnings of Modernism in art and music, and radical new philosophical systems of thought. A.N. Wilson visits the novelists, the philosophers, the poets and the painters to see what light they threw on the activities of the politicians, the scientists and the generals.

Putting together military, political, social and cultural history, After the Victorians creates a panoramic view of the era, and skillfully identifies the sources and causes of Britain’s decline.

About this title

About the Author

A.N. Wilson is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is an award-winning biographer and a celebrated novelist, winning prizes for much of his fiction.

Review

“. . . another masterpiece. There is the same magisterial sweep, the same rich mixture of broad historical narrative and telling detail, the same creation of a huge and varied cast of characters, all of them vividly portrayed in a few illuminating sentences. The range of Wilson’s knowledge is breathtaking...”
–Literary Review

“Readers who enjoyed the last volume will not be disappointed. After The Victorians has exactly the same compelling blend of political gossip, literary sketches and deft character portraits . . . simply irresistible . . .”
–Daily Telegraph

Praise for The Victorians:
“The best single-volume work on the Victorian age yet written.”
—Andrew Roberts
From the Trade Paperback edition.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hutchinson
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0091794846
• ISBN 13: 9780091794842
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 752