Britain Between the Wars with Simon Heffer

Simon Heffer's thirty-year career in Fleet Street has seen him hold senior editorial positions on The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator, and is currently a columnist for The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph.

Heffer comes to the bookshop to talk on the fourth and final volume in his critically-acclaimed sequence of books - High Minds, The Age of Decadence and Staring at God - that chart the history of Britain in the century from the accession of Queen Victoria to the outbreak of the Second World War.

Sing As We Go explores and explains the politics of the period, and puts such moments of national turmoil as the General Strike of 1926 and the Abdication Crisis of 1936 under the microscope. It offers pen portraits of the era's most significant figures. It traces the changing face of Britain as cars made their first mass appearance, the suburbs sprawled, and radio and cinema became the means of mass entertainment.

And it probes the deep divisions that split the nation: between the haves and have - nots, between warring ideological factions, and between those who promoted accommodation with fascism in Europe and those who bitterly opposed it.

'The fourth volume in his mighty series about Britain since the Victorians, Simon Heffer's history of Britain in the 1920s and 1930s is a monumental achievement. He covers everything from cars and cinemas to flappers and dance halls, and is especially good on Westminster politics, narrated with dry wit and forensic detail.'

* BEST HISTORY BOOKS OF 2023, Sunday Times *