Featured on The Book Show on Sky Arts on 17 December 2009.
The book to accompany the brilliant TV series is equally as engrossing. Andrew Marr looks at one of the most interesting and complex times of British history with the fall of the empire at the end of Victoria's reign through to the end of World War Two. Marr is passionate and knowledgeable and very accessible. A really interesting and insightful read.
| Primary Genre | History |
| Recommendations: |
In The Making of Modern Britain, Andrew Marr paints a fascinating portrait of life in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century as the country recovered from the grand wreckage of the British Empire.
Between the death of Queen Victoria and the end of the Second World War, the nation was shaken by war and peace. The two wars were the worst we had ever known and the episodes of peace among the most turbulent and surprising. As the political forum moved from Edwardian smoking rooms to an increasingly democratic Westminster, the people of Britain experimented with extreme ideas as they struggled to answer the question 'How should we live?' Socialism? Fascism? Feminism?. Meanwhile, fads such as eugenics, vegetarianism and nudism were gripping the nation, while the popularity of the music hall soared. It was also a time that witnessed the birth of the media as we know it today and the beginnings of the welfare state.
Beyond trenches, flappers and Spitfires, this is a story of strange cults and economic madness, of revolutionaries and heroic inventors, sexual experiments and raucous stage heroines. From organic food to drugs, nightclubs and celebrities to package holidays, crooked bankers to sleazy politicians, the echoes of today's Britain ring from almost every page.
The Making of Modern Britain features in the following genres: History, eBooks of the Month, Non-Fiction Books of the Month, History and Archaeology, Recommendations
The Making of Modern Britain is available in Paperback, Hardback
The Making of Modern Britain was written by Andrew Marr and published by Macmillan an imprint of Pan Macmillan
