The 60-year reign of Queen Elizabeth II has seen profound changes in Britain and her Diamond Jubilee offers a perfect opportunity to look back over six momentous decades.
The Times commissioned 12 writers to produce an essay looking at Britain in five-year snapshots of the Queen’s reign. Starting with the historian and biographer William Shawcross on the aftermath of the death of King George VI in 1952 and ending with Ben Macintyre, the bestselling author and Times writer, assessing the calamities of the recent banking crisis, all aspects of British life in the past 60 years are covered.
Those 12 articles have now been collected into an e-book, providing an authoritative and entertaining history of Britain between 1952 and 2012.
It also includes Valerie Grove on the rock’n’roll years of the late 1950s, Fay Weldon on the swinging Sixties, Roy Hattersley remembering the grim 1970s, Matthew Parris recalling the fall of Margaret Thatcher and David Aaronovitch on the fallout from 9/11.
With a cast that includes the Beatles, Harold Macmillan, Harry Potter, Christine Keeler, Dr Beeching, Lord Lucan and Basil Fawlty, to name just a few, The Second Elizabethan Age is a compelling and diverting read.
The Times commissioned 12 writers to produce an essay looking at Britain in five-year snapshots of the Queen’s reign. Starting with the historian and biographer William Shawcross on the aftermath of the death of King George VI in 1952 and ending with Ben Macintyre, the bestselling author and Times writer, assessing the calamities of the recent banking crisis, all aspects of British life in the past 60 years are covered.
Those 12 articles have now been collected into an e-book, providing an authoritative and entertaining history of Britain between 1952 and 2012.
It also includes Valerie Grove on the rock’n’roll years of the late 1950s, Fay Weldon on the swinging Sixties, Roy Hattersley remembering the grim 1970s, Matthew Parris recalling the fall of Margaret Thatcher and David Aaronovitch on the fallout from 9/11.
With a cast that includes the Beatles, Harold Macmillan, Harry Potter, Christine Keeler, Dr Beeching, Lord Lucan and Basil Fawlty, to name just a few, The Second Elizabethan Age is a compelling and diverting read.
