The Age of Decadence: A History of Britain: 1880-1914

by Simon Heffer

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781643136714
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	04/06/2021
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	912
Sales rank:	516,335
File size:	11 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Simon Heffer took a PhD in modern history at Cambridge. His previous books include: The Age of Decadence; Moral Desperado: A Life of Thomas Carlyle; Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell; Power and Place: The Political Consequences of King Edward VII; and Nor Shall My Sword: The Reinvention of England. In a thirty-year career on Fleet Street, he has held senior editorial positions on The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator and is now a columnist for The Sunday Telegraph. He lives in London.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

Prologue: Swagger 1

Part I The World of the Late Victorians

1 The Decline of the Pallisers 39

2 The Rise of the Pooters 118

3 The Workers' Struggle 169

Part II Coming Storms

4 Imperial Tensions 213

5 Ireland 270

6 The Death of God 336

7 The Civilising Mission 363

8 Protecting Women 392

Part III Public Debates, Public Doubts

9 The Future 419

10 Nostalgia 442

11 Imperial Consequences 474

12 Art and Life 497

13 The Uses of Literacy 534

Part IV Strife

14 Men and Power 561

15 Dukes and Dreadnoughts 596

16 The Great Unrest 651

17 Votes for Women 707

18 Rebellion 769

Envoi: One Afternoon of Heat 825

Bibliography 827

Notes 839

Index 863

Picture Acknowledgements 899

Editorial Reviews

"There are many pleasures to be had in this fine book, not the least of which is the vivacity of Heffer’s prose. He writes elegantly but punchily, combining seriousness with welcome flashes of waspishness that stop things from getting stuffy. The Age of Decadenceis a masterpiece of pacing. We build to a frantic cliff-top scramble as the Edwardians lose their grip on events and themselves. By the final pages, Heffer has skillfully conjured a country in chaos and heading over the edge."

The New York Times Book Review

Simon Heffer writes with admirable sensitivity about both music and literature. He does a brilliant job of exposing the rot beneath the glittering surface of late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. He writes with such exuberance—indeed with such Edwardian swagger—that he leaves the reader looking forward to his next volume.

The Economist

A riveting account of the pre-First World War years . A gloriously rich history. Balanced and judicious. The Age of Decadence is an enormously impressive and enjoyable read.

The Sunday Times (London)

"What Heffer recounts is fascinating in itself, but also eerily familiar, almost contemporary. History, after all, provides perspective on the present. Heffer's book offers glorious abundance."

The Washington Post - Michael Dirda

Simon Heffer has given us a magnificent account of a less than magnificent epoch. Vital and energetic.

The Literary Review

The years between Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee and the start of WWI found Britain swaggering with both empire and wealth, but undergoing vast political, economic, social, and technological change. Nothing escapes Heffer’s notice. Literature and drama capture the social milieu and help lay bare the age’s moral hypocrisy. Fortunes are made, yet hundreds of thousands live in deep poverty. Amid this, tensions are growing in Edwardian society that culminate in the sweeping away of many of Britain’s imperial pretension in the ghastly trenches of France. Heffer’s history is broad and deep and casts a brilliant light on this remarkable era.

Booklist

“The Age of Decadence is an impressively well-constructed book. Heffer weaves his wonderfully diverse strands of inquiry into a devastating critique of prewar Britain. His criticism of unbridled traditionalism is devastating and convincing. It’s also disturbingly relevant to the world in which we live.

The Times (London)

“Magisterial.

The Spectator

Advance praise from England:

From the Publisher

02/26/2021

Intended as a sequel to Heffer's previous work (High Minds: The Victorians and the Birth of Modern Britain), this comprehensive history plumbs the last decades of the Victorian period and first of the Edwardian—an era whose defining characteristic, according to Heffer, was "swagger," the confidence the upper echelons of English society held in their own preeminence. Their swagger affected all aspects of British life, even as the pillars that upheld traditional social order and the British Empire itself were beginning to crumble, due in part to political missteps, high-level scandals, and increasing restlessness of working-class people. These wide-ranging changes are Heffer's chief topic. He also examines how the rise of leisure time and the middle class affected the development of pleasure reading, music, and sports, but his focus is on the governmental arena, with entire chapters dedicated to in-depth accounts of parliamentary wrangling over Irish Home Rule and expansions of voting rights. These are a treat for those who enjoy political particulars, but will likely be too much for some. VERDICT Thorough, solid, and exceedingly detailed. Casual readers might find the amount of information overwhelming, but this is an excellent choice for history lovers who want to fully sink into the era.—Kathleen McCallister, William & Mary Libs., Williamsburg, VA

Library Journal

2021-01-14
A dense narrative account of Great Britain’s social and political conflicts in the decades before World War I.

“Swagger was the predominant style of the period,” asserts journalist and popular historian Heffer in his first book to be published in the U.S. He notes that the affluence and complacency of the English upper classes, traditionally viewed as defining features of the late Victorian and Edwardian years, covered up working-class, feminist, and Irish discontents. The Third Reform Act of 1884 went a long way toward extending the franchise, and the House of Lords reluctantly assented to it, but the Lords’ fierce resistance to the “People’s Budget” of 1909 provoked a constitutional crisis that nearly resulted in the abolition of the aristocratic upper chamber. Heffer covers this struggle as well as the parliamentary battles over Irish home rule and the government’s maladroit handling of such colonial imbroglios as the Boer War and the Siege of Khartoum. The author’s level of detail will daunt casual readers, but those who like their history long and leisurely will enjoy his approach. He offers similarly in-depth treatments of various juicy scandals among the Marlborough House Set, the louche circle formed around the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII), and he shows how they were examples of the triviality and sexual hypocrisy of Britain’s upper classes. Queen Victoria fares no better, sketched as a dour reactionary who detested the liberal governments she was forced to collaborate with as a constitutional monarch. Heffer comes across as middle-of-the-road politically and socially: He deplores Britain’s economic inequality and imperial injustices, but he depicts the strikes of trade union activists and the protests of militant suffragettes as provocative and needlessly divisive. Judicious but brief passages about the period’s culture, including exegeses of such paradigmatic works as John Galsworthy’s play Strife and H.G Wells’ novel Ann Veronica, somewhat leaven the heavy overall focus on political maneuvers.

Fans of sturdy, traditional history will appreciate this comprehensive survey.

Kirkus Reviews