Pleasures of the Past

History

David Cannadine

Europe

HarperCollins Publishers Canada, Limited

The British are famously obsessed with class, whether they see their country as a huge (and perhaps harmonious) hierarchy, as a society deeply divided into upper, middle and lower, or as the setting for a constant struggle between them and us. Class distinctions reflect reality - life on a council estate is very different from life in a stately home - but they are also constantly used by politicians to forge new notations of national identity, to demonize opponents, and to distribute praise or blame. are they at all helpful in explaining broader historical trends? In this survey of British life from the era of Dr Johnson to Thatcher, Major and Blair (and their contrasting ideals of a classless society), David Cannadine skilfully cuts through the rhetoric to the fundamental truths about class in Britain - truths which may change the way we think about our society and ourselves.

The Class in Britain

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Penguin??Books

The British Empire has generally been seen as a racist empire (most influentially in Edward Said's "Ornamentalism"). While not wholly denying this, Cannadine, in this funny, often horrifying book, suggests a different dynamic. The British rulers were motivated not by race but by class - they loathed Indians or Africans no more or less than they loathed the great majority of Englishmen, dreaming of an empire based on deference and feudalism. The often farcical gap between these views and reality make "Ornamentalism" both highly enjoyable and extremely provocative for anyone wishing to understand how the British Empire really worked.

Ornamentalism : How the British Saw Their Empire

SHORTLISTED FOR THE DUFF COOPER PRIZE 2018 'This is stupendous. The British nineteenth century, in all its complexity, all its horror, all its energy, all its hopes is laid bare. This is the definitive history, and will remain so for generations' A.N. Wilson To live in nineteenth-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, work; cities grew vast; scientific ideas made the intellectual landscape unrecognizable. 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 nineteenth 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. Victorious Century reframes a time at once strangely familiar and yet wholly unlike our own.

Victorious Century

Penguin Books, Ltd.

In May 2005 Penguin will publish 70 unique titles to celebrate the company's 70th birthday. The titles in the Pocket Penguins series are emblematic of the renowned breadth of quality of the Penguin list and will hark back to Penguin founder Allen Lane's vision of good books for all'. David Cannadine is one of Britain's premier historians, essayists and broadcasters, whose books such as Hope and Glory and Ornamentalism have brought erudite and entertaining social history to a wide audience. As General Editor of the Penguin History of Britain series he embodies Penguin's long-term commitment to quality, accessible history publishing. This piece from his acclaimed Aspects of Aristocracy takes a wry look at Winston Churchill's upper-class origins.

The Aristocratic Adventurer (Pocket Penguins 70's)

Penguin

George V (Penguin Monarchs): The Unexpected King

Explains how the notables and nobles lost their wealth, power, and prestige, and describes the breakup of the great landed estates and the erosion of the system of titles and honors

The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy

Yale University Press

Lords and landlords: The aristocracy and the towns, 1774-1967

Distributed in North America b

From one of our most acclaimed historians comes an account of human solidarity throughout the ages, provocatively arguing against the received wisdom that history is best understood as a chronicle of groups in conflict. Investigating the six most pervasive categories of human difference--religion, nation, class, gender, race, and civilization--Cannadine asks how determinative each of them has really been over the course of history. Without denying their power to motivate populations dramatically at particular moments, he reveals that in the long term none has proven remotely as divisive as the occasional absolutist cries of "us versus them" would suggest, whether Christian versus Muslim during the Crusades (and now), landed gentry versus peasantry during the Bolshevik Revolution, or Jews versus "Aryan race" in Nazi Germany. For most of recorded time, these same "unbridgeable" differences were experienced as just one identity among others; whatever most chroniclers, self-serving mythmakers, and demagogues would have us believe, history needs to be reimagined to include the countless fruitful interactions across these lines, which are usually left out of the picture.

The Undivided Past: Humanity Beyond Our Differences

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Blackstone Audiobooks

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Books by David Cannadine