Get Free Shipping on orders over $89
Yesterday : The United Kingdom from Thatcher to Covid - Brian Harrison

Yesterday

The United Kingdom from Thatcher to Covid

By: Brian Harrison

Hardcover | 12 May 2026

At a Glance

Hardcover


$89.99

or 4 interest-free payments of $22.50 with

 or 

Ships in 15 to 25 business days

The first major account of this transformative period in the history of Great Britain

Between 1990 and 2020, the United Kingdom experienced the tension between unparalleled social change and a pragmatic political culture which sought continuity, compromise and gradualism. Thatcher's legacy was slowly digested, Blair's 'New Labour' thoroughly scrutinized, and the decision was made after forty-seven years to leave the European Union. The UK's long-established major institutions-monarchy, parliament, and the union between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland-were sorely tested. Yesterday provides the first fully documented history of this pivotal time in Great Britain.

Was the UK in decline? Brian Harrison points to Britain's unsuccessful adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan and its relative economic decline, underfunded hospitals, sink schools, over-filled prisons, and terrorism of both Irish and Islamic varieties. Yet there were successes. Harrison shows how the UK's participatory institutions outmanoeuvred terrorism and precariously surmounted regional, intergenerational, ethnic and social-class tensions. This vibrant, creative society saw major improvements in time, place and recruitment for work, as well as growth and innovation in conservation, digitization, tourism, consumerism, sport and the arts. Some changes were revolutionary: in family life and relations between the generations, and in the ever-changing electronic media. And if religious observance was in decline, immigrants were introducing new faiths and even a revived religious fervour while attitudes to health and death were changing fast.

A panoramic and wide-ranging analysis by a scholar at the height of his powers, Yesterday paints an evocative, richly textured portrait of a people who were shedding their complacency and insularity and bracing themselves to face a very different but promising future.

More in Social & Cultural History

Manchester must dance : A life of music, madness and moving on up - Mike Pickering
Divide & Rule : Royal Women and their Battles - Catherine Mayer

RRP $36.99

$29.99

19%
OFF
The Voynich Manuscript - Raymond Clemens

RRP $82.95

$60.75

27%
OFF
Raven Mother : War, Family and Inheritance: a Memoir - Jane Messer
Goliath's Curse : The History and Future of Societal Collapse - Luke Kemp
First Knowledges Politics : Philosophical Ordering by Country - Morgan James Brigg
The Origins of Totalitarianism : Penguin Modern Classics - Hannah Arendt
The Children of Ash and Elm : A History of the Vikings - Neil Price
The Dawn of Everything : A New History of Humanity - David Graeber
A World Appears : A Journey Into Consciousness - Michael Pollan

RRP $39.99

$31.75

21%
OFF
The Town Like No Other : A Story of Broken Hill - Robert McLean

RRP $32.99

$28.75

13%
OFF
Women, Race & Class : Penguin Modern Classics - Angela Y. Davis

RRP $26.99

$22.75

16%
OFF
Entitled : The Rise and Fall of the House of York - Andrew Lownie

RRP $37.99

$19.00

50%
OFF
Blitzed : Drugs in Nazi Germany - Norman Ohler

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
The Breath of the Gods : The History and Future of the Wind - Simon Winchester
Hard Streets : Working-Class Lives in Charlie Chaplin's London - Jacqueline Riding