A revolutionary new economic and political history of 20th
century Britain.
David Edgerton is Hans Rausing Professor of the History of Science and Technology and Professor of Modern British History at King's College London. He is the author of a sequence of ground-breaking books in 20th century British history- Science, Technology and the British Industrial 'Decline', 1870-1970; Warfare State- Britain, 1920-1970; as well as Britain's War Machine, and England and the Aeroplane, both published by Penguin. He is also the author of the iconoclastic and brilliant The Shock of the Old- Technology and Global History Since 1900.
Every so often a book comes out that the entire political class
needs to read ... Edgerton is Britain's most exciting and arresting
late-modern historian ... Thanks to this rich and compelling book,
we now have a proper map and compass.
*New Statesman*
A fierce and dazzling account of 20th-century Britain
*Guardian*
An extraordinary revisionist study of modern Britain ... Edgerton's
aim here is nothing short of a radical repositioning of our sense
of ourselves as a nation. It's a startling book, and an unexpected
thesis ... I'll be reading [it] over and over, and for years to
come.'
*The Herald*
Forget almost everything you thought you knew about Britain in the
20th century ... You will not find a better informed history of
this country in the last century.
*Evening Standard*
Stimulating and bracing ... He demonstrates that the story the
British tell about themselves - and how it is taught in schools and
discussed in the public sphere - is bogus.
*The Times*
Unsentimental and rigorous rewriting of British history. ... It
looks beyond the froth of political debate, takes business
seriously and analyses government as much from Whitehall and
administration as Westminster and politics.
*Times Higher Education*
Beautifully written and can be read with pleasure by the general
reader as well as the trained historian
*Daily Telegraph*
Original, opinionated, scholarly, complex and immensely stimulating
... this ambitious and provocative book achieves something
remarkable. It provides a striking new perspective on our past, one
that future historians may not accept but will be unable to
ignore.
*Literary Review*
A sweepingly, and ambitiously, revisionist account of 20th century
British history ... full of striking lines ... and a very important
challenge to much of the existing historiography.
*Progressive Review*
Timely jolt to a deluded 'Bullshit Britain'. David Edgerton fillets
national delusion and historical amnesia ... of a country that
knows so little of its own history.
*Irish Times*
Edgerton is an extraordinary historian ... Written with bracing
élan, Rise and Fall generates insights at every turn. Edgerton set
out to rattle "the cage of clichés which imprison our historical
and political imaginations", and succeeds magnificently.
*OpenDemocracy*
... refreshing and immensely stimulating, and should be compulsory
reading for anyone wanting to understand the reality of
twentieth-century Britain. Lewis Namier, another historian known
for his combative brand of scholarship, viewed iconoclasm as the
judge of a great historian, that having produced an account of a
period 'others should not be able to practise within its sphere in
the terms of the preceding era'. Edgerton has certainly achieved
this.
*History*
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