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Heyday : Britain and the Birth of the Modern World - Ben Wilson

Heyday

Britain and the Birth of the Modern World

By: Ben Wilson

Paperback | 6 April 2017 | Edition Number 1

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'Excellent . . . This is narrative history of the highest quality' Andrew Lycett, Sunday Telegraph

'Wonderfully engrossing and intelligent . . . clever and entertaining' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times

Heyday brings to life one of the most extraordinary periods in modern history. The 1850s was a decade of breathtaking transformation, with striking parallels for our own times. The world was reshaped by technology, trade, mass migration and war. The global economy expanded fivefold, millions of families emigrated to the ends of the earth to carve out new lives, technology revolutionised communications, while steamships and railways cut across vast continents and oceans, shrinking the world and creating the first global age.

In a fast-paced, kaleidoscopic narrative, the acclaimed historian Ben Wilson recreates this time of explosive energy and dizzying change, a rollercoaster ride of booms and bust, focusing on the lives of the men and women reshaping its frontiers. At the centre stands Great Britain. The country was the peak of its power as it attempted to determine the destinies of hundreds of millions of people. A dazzling history of a tumultuous decade, Heyday reclaims an often overlooked period that was fundamental not only in in the making of Britain but of the modern world.

About the Author

Born in 1980, Ben Wilson's first book was published when he was just twenty-four, and he is one of our best renowned and admirably young historians. He lives in Suffolk.
Industry Reviews
The world began speeding up in the 1850s and hasn't stopped since . . . Ben Wilson's richly detailed and compelling narrative of this whirlwind period catches its exhilaration - PROSPECT

Scholarly, intelligent and readable . . . an original prism through which to view the mid-19th century and, essentially, about the invention not so much of modernity as of globalisation - THE SPECTATOR

Immensely enjoyable . . . highly recommended

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