Second edition of The Pocket Guide to Edwardian England, newly revised and expanded. The Edwardian Era simplified, organized, and easy to reference. Aimed towards writers of historical fiction, though genealogists, Downton Abbey fans, and the curious alike will find this an excellent starting point for their own research. Compiled from lectures and blog posts on Edwardian Promenade, as well as 70% more original content, Edwardian England: A Guide to Everyday Life, 1900-1914 poses to give a entry level, but thorough look at the time period made popular by Downton Abbey and Mr. Selfridge.
Compiled from lectures and blog posts on Edwardian Promenade, the Pocket Guide to Edwardian England poses to give a fun, frothy, but thorough look at the time period made popular by Downton Abbey and Upstairs Downstairs! From the royal family of Edward VII to the working class, to the servants who toiled in great country houses and their masters, to the mighty politicians and their goals. For anyone wanting a short and concise, yet deeply engrossing look at this opulent era, Pocket Guide to Edwardian England is just book to take you away.
At a formal dinner you must never take a second helping or you will find yourself dining alone. The Edwardian age (1901-1910), the last period of the English country house, was defined by its etiquette for those both upstairs and down. This 'golden era' of gentility had answers to everything. Discover the correct way to address tradesmen, how to produce a pomade against baldness, how to deal with gossip and ways to get a perfect shine to glass among many other indispensable gems in this Edwardian guide to life.
"A convincing account of a watershed epoch, Hattersley's concise yet comprehensive history casts new light on a much-misunderstood era." - Publishers Weekly Edwardian Britain has often been described as a golden sunlit afternoon---personified by its genial and self-indulgent King. In fact, modern Britain was born during the reign of Edward VII, when politics, science, literature, and the arts were turned upside down. In Parliament, the peers were crushed for the first time since Magna Carta. Irish nationalists and suffragettes took politics out on to the streets. Home Rule and Votes for Women were delayed, not precipitated, by the First World War. Great parliamentary stars such as Lloyd George and Winston Churchill typified an era in which personalities dominated the headlines of the new tabloid newspapers. It was the age of Rolls and Royce, Scott and Shackleton, Edward Elgar, Shaw, the Pankhursts, and Mrs. Alice Keppel, whose social life was reported without mention of her relationship with the King. The theater of ideas superseded drawing room dramas. Novelists of genius---from Henry James to D. H. Lawrence---produced a masterpiece each year. A London gallery caused a sensation with an exhibition of "Postimpressionists." Edward Elgar was the first English composer for two hundred years to stand comparison with the continental European masters. In sport, Victorian chivalry was replaced with unashamed professionalism. Man flew for the first time and the motorcar became a common sight on city streets. Physicists examined the structure of the atom and philosophers disputed the traditional definition of virtue. The churches tried, without success, to confront and confound a new skepticism. Explorers sought to prove that men could live, and die, like gods. Drawing on previously unpublished diaries and letters, Roy Hattersley's The Edwardians is a beguiling account of a turbulent and frequently misunderstood period. It is a full and often humorous portrait of an era that he elevates to its rightful place in British history.
'Must be regarded as an important step in rescuing Edwardian history from what he rightly calls "an academic limbo" ... combines the qualities of readability, breadth of focus, willingness to explain.' - TES
Fashion in the Edwardian period underwent some quite revolutionary changes. The delicately coloured, flower-and-lace-trimmed trailing gowns and elaborate hairstyles worn by tightly corseted fashionable ladies in the early years of Edward VII's reign would transform into the boldly coloured, dramatically stylized Eastern-inspired kimono wraps, slender hobble skirts, ankle-skimming tunic dresses and turbans of 1914 on the eve of the First World War. This book presents the story of women's and men's dress through this exciting period, and is a fascinating addition to the bestselling Shire fashion list that already includes Fashion in the Time of Jane Austen and Fashion in the Time of the Great Gatsby.
Examines how changes from the Industrial Revolution prior to World War I brought about radical transformation in society, changes in education, and massive migration in population that led to one of the bloodiest events in history.
A richly detailed history of Britain at its imperial zenith, revealing the simmering tensions and explosive rivalries beneath the opulent surface of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. The popular memory of Britain in the years before the Great War is of a powerful, contented, orderly, and thriving country. Britain commanded a vast empire: she bestrode international commerce. Her citizens were living longer, profiting from civil liberties their grandparents only dreamed of and enjoying an expanding range of comforts and pastimes. The mood of pride and self-confidence can be seen in Edward Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance marches, newsreels of George V’s coronation, and London’s great Edwardian palaces. Yet beneath the surface things were very different In The Age of Decadence, Simon Heffer exposes the contradictions of late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain. He explains how, despite the nation’s massive power, a mismanaged war against the Boers in South Africa created profound doubts about her imperial destiny. He shows how attempts to secure vital social reforms prompted the twentieth century’s gravest constitutional crisis—and coincided with the worst industrial unrest in British history. He describes how politicians who conceded the vote to millions more men disregarded women so utterly that female suffragists’ public protest bordered on terrorism. He depicts a ruling class that fell prey to degeneracy and scandal. He analyses a national psyche that embraced the motor-car, the sensationalist press, and the science fiction of H. G. Wells, but also the nostalgia of A. E. Housman.
When war broke out in Europe in 1914, it surprised a European population enjoying the most beautiful summer in memory. For nearly a century since, historians have debated the causes of the war. Some have cited the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand; others have concluded it was unavoidable. In Europe’s Last Summer, David Fromkin provides a different answer: hostilities were commenced deliberately. In a riveting re-creation of the run-up to war, Fromkin shows how German generals, seeing war as inevitable, manipulated events to precipitate a conflict waged on their own terms. Moving deftly between diplomats, generals, and rulers across Europe, he makes the complex diplomatic negotiations accessible and immediate. Examining the actions of individuals amid larger historical forces, this is a gripping historical narrative and a dramatic reassessment of a key moment in the twentieth-century.
Captures the essence of the era in a lively study of its politics, personalities, technical innovations, arts and preoccupations. Includes chapters on the Prince of Wales, the Boer War, High Society and working class, the Middle Classes, writers, music, artists and craftsmen, the theatre, music hall and vaudeville, the press, the constitutional crisis, bosses and workers, suffragettes, the Titanic, Russian ballet, science and Gowland Hopkins, ragtime, Ulster and Home rule, etc.
