A History of 20th Century Britain

Between the death of Queen Victoria and the turn of the Millennium, Britain has been utterly transformed by an extraordinary century of war and peace.

A History of 20th Century Britain collects together for the first time Andrew Marr's two bestselling volumes A History of Modern Britain and The Making of Modern Britain.

Together, they tell the story of how the country recovered from the grand wreckage of the British Empire only to stumble into a series of monumental upheavals, from World Wars to Cold Wars and everything in between. In each decade, political leaders thought they knew what they were doing, but found themselves confounded. Every time, the British people turned out to be stroppier and harder to herd than predicted. This wonderfully entertaining history follows all the political and economic stories, but deals too with the riotous colour of an extraordinary century: a century of trenches, flappers and Spitfires; of comedy, punks, Margaret Thatcher's wonderful good luck, and the triumph of shopping over idealism.

'Lively, full of rich anecdotes and sparkling pen portraits. Andrew Marr has the rare gift of being able to explain complex issues in a few crisp sentences' Sunday Telegraph