To live in 19th-century Britain was to experience an astonishing series
of changes, of a kind for which there was simply no precedent in the
human experience. There were revolutions in transport, communication and
work; cities grew vast; and scientific ideas made the intellectual
landscape unrecognisable. This was an exhilarating time but also a
horrifying one.
In his dazzling new book, David Cannadine has created a bold,
fascinating new interpretation of the British 19th century in all its
energy and dynamism, darkness and vice. This was a country which saw
itself at the summit of the world. And yet it was a society also
convulsed by doubt, fear and introspection. Repeatedly, politicians and
writers felt themselves to be staring into the abyss - and what is seen
sometimes seen as an era of irritating self-belief was in practice
obsessed by a sense of its own fragility, whether as a great power or as
a moral force.
Victorious Century is an extraordinarily enjoyable book - its author
catches the relish, humour and theatricality of the age but also the
dilemmas of a kind with which we remain familiar today. It reframes a
time at once strangely familiar and yet wholly unlike our own.
