Our Times | Non-Fiction - www.zzdbook.com

Our Times

Oct 11, 2024 4:31 PM

Author:A.N. Wilson

Our Times

When Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in 1953, many proclaimed the start of a new Elizabethan Age. Few had any inkling, however, of the stupendous changes that would take place over the next 50 years, in Britain and around the world.

In Our Times, A.N. Wilson takes the reader on an exhilarating journey from that day to this. With his acute eye not just for the broad social and cultural sweep but also for the telling detail, he brilliantly distils half a century of unprecedented social and political change.

Here are the defining events and characters of the modern age, from the Suez crisis to Vietnam, The Beatles to Princess Diana, the miners' strike to the Cold War. Here are the Angry Young Men, the satirists of Beyond the Fringe, Ruth Ellis and the abolition of hanging, the rise of pop culture and celebrity, industrial unrest and the Winter of Discontent, the Thatcher era and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. This book will propel you from post-war austerity - an age of deference in which men wore hats and women wore gloves - through the alterations in our social landscape to the multi-cultural Britain of today. Despite the appalling tyrannies that have taken place in the world, Wilson argues that in the last fifty years Britain has known a period of prosperity and peace without precedent in its history.

With Our Times, A.N. Wilson triumphantly concludes the acclaimed trilogy which includes The Victorians and After the Victorians. It makes compelling reading for anyone interested in the forces that have shaped our world.

Reviews

A very funny, extremely opinionated, always provocative and often thoughtful read... Wilson is endlessly entertaining

—— Dominic Sandbrook , Observer

One of the most important books of recent years

—— Daily Mail

This is an enormously enjoyable book, a non-systematic, chatty and wilful piece of work, slaloming through familiar terrain with brio and dash rather than statistics and documents

—— Sam Leith , Spectator

The story is told with a verve that catches the excitement of a turbulent era

—— Roy Hattersley , The Times

A sweeping, masterly distillation of the past 55 years in Britain, acknowledging the incredible changes since the Queen took the throne in 1953 ... while also lamenting what has been lost

—— Books of the Year, Daily Mail

This is the final volume in A.N. Wilson's trilogy tracing the course of Britain from the accession of Queen Victoria to the present day. The whole work, finished in just six years, is a monument to its author's industry, erudition and skill. It is hard to think of a professional scholar who could have accomplished this grand feat, let alone spiced the narrative with such pungent wit and piquant anecdotes

—— Piers Brendon , Sunday Times

Now that the trilogy is complete, it can be said with satisfaction that the verve, erudition and wit that distinguished the earlier books are undimmed in this latest work... He has written a fine work of popular history, and the fact that it is consistently entertaining in no way obscures the underlying seriousness

—— Literary Review

Wilson accurately skewers the follies of all and sundry

—— Will Self , Evening Standard

A brilliant panorama of the past 55 years... Where Wilson excels is in the mixture of fact, gossip and waspish thumbnail character sketches... Overall, Wilson's analysis of our age is inspired

—— Piers Paul Read , Standpoint

Wilson has produced a scintillating, coruscating indictment of British national collapse since the 19th century ... Under Wilson's pen, such a history is richly told

—— Tristram Hunt , Guardian

Gives a wonderful sense of Macmillan's complexity and stature

—— Blair Worden , Spectator, Christmas round up

A spellbinding insight into the fascinating character of one of the most remarkable politicians of the 20th century.

—— Archie Norman , Evening Standard, Christmas round up

A solidly buttressed biography that parallels his earlier works... Supermac is crammed full with interesting facts, germane and diverting by turns

—— Peter Clarke , TLS

Thorpe's superb biography leaves no primary source untapped, and bountiful anecdotes make this account of a truly three-dimensional character a joy to read.

—— Telegraph

Bringing together 35 years of research this biography of Harold Macmillan looks at both his personal and political achievements, conflicts, and events that defined his time. From Eton to prime minister, this is a compelling read.

—— Charlotte Vowden , Daily Express

He is an Aston Martin DB6 kind of writer, who is very English, very stately

—— Anthony Seldon , The Browser

Scholarly, and thoroughly researched, Supermac should nevertheless appeal to the general reader through the accessibility of its proce and the assistance offered by placing events in historical context... Humane, benevolent, and considerable; much like its subject

—— Dr Martin Farr , BBC History Magazine

The best biography of a post-war British Prime Minister yet written.

—— Vernon Bogdanor, Professor of Government at Oxford University

A unique and astonishing social history book which is revolutionary in its concept, informative and entertaining

—— History magazine

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