Simon Heffer

Sing As We Go is an astonishingly ambitious overview of the political, social and cultural history of the country from 1919 to 1939.

It 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.

Simon Heffer read English at Cambridge and took a PhD in modern history at that university. His previous books include A Short History of Power, Simply English and High Minds: The Victorians and the Birth of Modern Britain and Staring at God: Britain in the Great War. In a thirty-year career in Fleet Street, he has held senior editorial positions on The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator, and is now a columnist for The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph.