A globe-spanning narrative history of the 1850s - a time of electrifying change - seen through the eyes of the men and women who embraced the adventurous spirit of the times
Ben Wilson is the author of four critically acclaimed books including WHAT PRICE LIBERTY?, for which he received a Somerset Maugham Award, and the bestselling EMPIRE OF THE DEEP. He was born in 1980 and educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a first-class degree and an MPhil in history. He lives in Suffolk.
'Wilson's account of the 1850s is a wonderfully engrossing and
intelligent read . . . He has clever and entertaining things to say
about even the most banal topics, tracing the Victorian enthusiasm
for beards, for instance, to the impact of the Crimean War . . . He
even manages to make the history of Minnesota exciting'
*THE SUNDAY TIMES*
'With a rip-roaring style to match his subject . . . excellent . .
. His grasp of the interplay between politics, economics and
individuals is admirable. This is narrative history of the highest
quality'
*DAILY TELEGRAPH*
'Engrossing study of the explosion of the new technology that
reshaped the world in the 1850s, and Britain's role in it'
*THE SUNDAY TIMES 'Must Reads'*
'In this rollercoaster of a book, Ben Wilson describes the 1850s as
the most explosive period in history, a decade that gave birth to
modernity and trampled those who resisted it . . . So much of
current transnational history is, quite frankly, perishingly dull,
with arcane analysis smothering the wonderful stories the past
provides. Heyday stands in refreshing contrast: the scholarship is
certainly impressive but the drama is what delights. Wilson's knack
for detail brings this history alive . . . Heyday is a lot like its
subject; it's a big-bearded book of enormous scope and unstoppable
momentum. However, it's also a sobering tale of greed gone
wrong'
*THE TIMES*
'This is a scholarly, intelligent and readable book. This book is
an original prism through which to view the mid-19th century and,
essentially, about the invention not so much of modernity as of
globalisation'
*THE SPECTATOR*
'I finished Ben Wilson's immensely enjoyable new book, Heyday:
Britain & the Birth of the Modern World. Highly recommended'
*Tom Holland*
'Ben Wilson argues that the 1850s should be seen as a distinct
period within the Victorian era because its developments shaped the
world for decades. Key among these are the 1851 Great Exhibition;
the "gold rushes", migration to area with newly discovered deposits
of gold; and the first underwater transmission of a telegraph
message, from London to Paris in 1851 - which, in theory, meant
that the whole world could be linked in such a away. The Crimean
War (1853-56), meanwhile pitted Russia against the UK, France,
Sardinia and the Ottoman empire in a conflict that altered global
alliances'
*BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE*
'A fascinating and sweeping account of one of the most eventful
decades in world history, a period when the nation was fast-tracked
into the modern age . . . compellingly written and intricately
researched . . . Wilson skilfully examines how a series of
intertwined events gave birth to today's society . . . readers of
this excellent book will undoubtedly find that the events of more
than 150 years ago have a great deal of light to shine on our own
supposedly more advanced civilisation'
*DAILY EXPRESS*
'Heyday brings to life one of the most extraordinary periods in
modern history. Over the course of the 1850s, the world was
reshaped by technology, trade, mass migration and war. The global
economy expanded fivefold, millions of families emigrated to the
ends of the earth to carve out new lives, technology revolutionised
communications, while steamships and railways cut across vast
continents and oceans, shrinking the worlds and creating the first
global age. In a fast-paced, kaleidoscopic narrative, the acclaimed
historian Ben Wilson recreates this time of explosive energy and
dizzying change, a rollercoaster ride of booms and bust, focusing
on the lives of the men and women reshaping its frontiers'
*DISCOVER YOUR ANCESTORS*
'The world began speeding up in the 1850s and hasn't stopped since.
Electricity and steam were the crucial technologies: railways,
steamships, telegraphs and submarine cables shrank the world in
space and time. Now that information, commodities and people could
move faster than ever before a genuinely global economy emerged,
hungry for growth, labour and new markets . . . Ben Wilson's richly
detailed and compelling narrative of this whirlwind period catches
its exhilaration'
*PROSPECT*
'The tale is told on a global scale. Snapshots, or perhaps picture
postcards, colourfully depict events on every continent except
Africa, which offered little hope or profit to the moderniser.
Thousands of people moved west of the Mississippi or from Britain
to the Australian goldfields; British soldiers looted the palaces
of Oudh and joined with the French to burn the Summer Palace in
Beijing. There are plentiful sketches of inspired inventors and
determined engineers. This book abounds in good stories too. Wilson
recounts, for example, the rumour that Australian miners ate
sandwiches with £10 as a filling . . . without doubt this is a book
that has sweep and panache. It is crammed with interesting facts
and the general reader will be painlessly transported across oceans
. . . engaging'
*LITERARY REVIEW*
'What was it about the 1850s that led to it becoming a period of
such remarkable economic, technological and social change? Seen
through the eyes of the key players, Ben Wilson's book traverses
the globe in search of answers, producing a fresh, compelling take
on what was arguably the pivotal decade in the entire Victorian
era'
*HISTORY REVEALED*
'This decade [the 1850s] saw major global events - the Australian
Gold Rush, the Crimean War, the Indian Rebellion and the start of
the American Civil War - but also revolutions in transport and
communications, bringing that global empire much nearer home . . .
All of these subjects, and many more - right down to the
mid-Victorian craze for impressive beards - are covered with aplomb
in Wilson's dramatic and stirring narrative . . . A rollercoaster
ride through the 1850s, guided by an expert historian'
*YOUR FAMILY HISTORY*
'In the 1850s, Britain was not merely the first superpower; British
innovation, invention and energy were shaping the modern world in
ways that we can still easily recognize today. Ben Wilson
eloquently argues that this is when "the forces that define our age
first swept across the world" . . . This is a book written with
great verve and with a sharp eye for the obscure fact or the
telling details . . . Reading it is rather like immersing oneself
in an invigorating shower, a cascade that shifts between hot and
cold, and leaves a feeling of being both enriched and stimulated,
as well as a touch exhausted'
*TLS*
'A highly readable account'
*EVERGREEN*
'The 1850s, as Ben Wilson shows, was not a time of peace. This was
a turbulent decade that gave birth to modernity. Wilson rattles
through the decade, jumping from the Indian Mutiny, the Crimean
War, the Australian gold rush, Commodore Perry's arrival in Japan,
Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) and the Great
Exhibition. Lively, intelligent, popular history'
*THE TIMES 'Summer Books'*
'Wilson's book is a persuasive example of a newish turn in writing
about the 19th century: the expansive survey of a globalised
Victorian world, powered by a new battery of online resources . . .
It's an exhilarating time to be a Victorianist . . . Heyday is a
book that contains plenty of wonders. It scopes the globe, looking
for the telltale marks of modernity. It finds them on the discharge
of gunpowder, the slather of industrial grease, the shiver of the
telegraph wire'
*THE GUARDIAN*
'This is an engaging history of the capitalist world in the 1850s,
which stitches together vivid stories of entrepreneurs and
adventurers from the United States to New Zealand. Heyday: Britain
and the Birth of the Modern World sometimes feels like an exciting
Phileas Fogg travelogue, with Ben Wilson's finger spinning round a
mahogany globe in his study and us with it . . . The strength of
this magnificent book is Wilson's awareness of "modernity's close
connection with barbarism". To acknowledge that progress came at a
high price for most people is not to belittle British achievements;
it merely puts them into a proper historical perspective'
*HISTORY TODAY*
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