The Morbid Age

Oct 28, 2024 1:27 PM

Author:Richard Overy

The Morbid Age

British intellectual life between the wars stood at the heart of modernity. The combination of a liberal, uncensored society and a large educated audience for new ideas made Britain a laboratory for novel ways to understand the world. The Morbid Age opens a window onto this creative but anxious era, the golden age of the public intellectual and scientist: Arnold Toynbee, Aldous and Julian Huxley, H. G. Wells, Marie Stopes and a host of others. Yet, as Richard Overy argues, a striking characteristic of so many of the ideas that emerged from this new age - from eugenics to Freud's unconscious, to modern ideas of pacifism and world government - was the fear that the West was facing a possibly terminal crisis of civilization.

The modern era promised progress of a kind, but it was overshadowed by a growing fear of decay and death, an end to the civilized world and the arrival of a new Dark Age - even though the country had suffered no occupation, no civil war and none of the bitter ideological rivalries of inter-war Europe, and had an economy that survived better than most. The Morbid Age explores how this strange paradox came about. Ultimately, Overy shows, the coming of war was almost welcomed as a way to resolve the contradictions and anxieties of this period, a war in which it was believed civilization would be either saved or utterly destroyed.

Reviews

A work of tremendous authority and breadth. With this book, as with Charlemagne's empire, one feels that an extraordinary range of things have been brought together

—— Noel Malcolm , Sunday Telegraph

Intensely rewarding

—— Jonathan Sumption , Spectator

Almost every page is full of arresting details and insights ... and a sharp eye for a revealing anecdote, illuminating even the murkiest corners of the so-called Dark Ages

—— Dominic Sandbrook , Daily Telegraph

The Penguin History of Europe series ... is one of contemporary publishing's great projects

—— New Statesman

With five volumes now out, the Penguin History of Europe series ... is shaping up to be the best general account available, superseding all previous ones

—— Economist

A bold and vivid history of football's disparate founding fathers

—— Peter Watts , Time Out

The football season hardly ends at all these days, but for literary (or at least literate) fans who miss it, there is Richard Sanders's Beastly Fury: The Strange Birth of British Football, which traces a game now bedevilled by preening, overpaid cheats back to a public-school culture of "egregious selfishness", and preening, unpaid cheats. Britain's peculiar relationship to professional sport is acutely analysed by Sanders, who asks the winningly unpatriotic question "if we invented football, how come we are so bad at it?", and finds the answer in our ignorance of foreign origins of the game, the cult of amateurishness, and a reluctance to accept the sport's (re-)democratization in the twentieth century.

—— David Horspool , Times Literary Supplement

Both entertaining and informative, Beastly Fury is an impeccably researched book telling an enthralling story in an easily read fluent style

—— Colin Shindler, author of Manchester United Ruined My Life

Fascinating stuff

—— Football Punk

Shows that publishers continue to believe in a market for the thinking person's football book... a good historical read

—— Matt Dickinson , The Times

A fine book... well-researched and superbly written

—— Soccer and Society

This original thesis, written with style, wit and authority, explains how the beastly game became more beautiful.

—— Simon Redfern , The Independent on Sunday

Delightful... a valuable work of social history

—— Rob Attar , BBC History magazine

Utterly absorbing, a really good read, sensitive and balanced and surely the definitive last word on the subject

—— Dr Harry Shukman, Emeritus Fellow of Modern Russian History, St Antony’s College Oxford

Rappaport narrates her story in an original fashion, focusing on the final two weeks inside the Ipatiev House before the murders

—— Times Literary Supplement

Brilliantly shows how history is never simple but always enthralling when written with this style

—— The Bookseller

Extraordinary and powerful ... Having uncovered enlightening new sources, Rappaport has produced a highly accessible account of the last 14 days in the lives of the former tsar Nicholas, his wife Alexandra and their children

—— Western Daily Press

Riveting account of turbulence, social upheaval and murder in early 20th-century Russia, which draws on new evidence uncovered in the icy, remote city where Tsar Nicholas and his family met their bloody deaths. Juxtaposing fascinating domestic details with analysis of the international political scene, the author strips away the romance of their incarceration and the mythology surrounding their murders to reveal an extraordinary human situation and its seismic worldwide repercussions

—— Sainsbury’s Magazine

Rappaport precisely imagines those last few days ... As the pages turn quickly towards an end that is never in doubt, a picture emerges of a devout, loving and rather commonplace family

—— Waterstone’s Books Quarterly

The great strength of Rappaport's book is her tight focus on the royal family's final three months in the Iaptiev House... She has told the human story, and the truly appalling tale of what man can do to man

—— Independent (Ireland)

A tragic and thrilling account ... Ekaterinburg is really a twofold triumph for Helen Rappaport ... On top of the impressive level of research that Rappaport has conducted in order to produce Ekaterinburg, she also has an excellent and engaging writing style and succeeds in maintaining the tension and mood throughout ... Gritty and compelling

—— suite101.com

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