Promotional Information

A revolutionary new economic and political history of 20th century Britain.

About the Author

David Edgerton is Hans Rausing Professor of the History of Science and Technology and Professor of Modern British History at King's College London. He is the author of a sequence of ground-breaking books in 20th century British history- Science, Technology and the British Industrial 'Decline', 1870-1970; Warfare State- Britain, 1920-1970; as well as Britain's War Machine, and England and the Aeroplane, both published by Penguin. He is also the author of the iconoclastic and brilliant The Shock of the Old- Technology and Global History Since 1900.

Reviews

Every so often a book comes out that the entire political class needs to read ... Edgerton is Britain's most exciting and arresting late-modern historian ... Thanks to this rich and compelling book, we now have a proper map and compass.
*New Statesman*

A fierce and dazzling account of 20th-century Britain
*Guardian*

An extraordinary revisionist study of modern Britain ... Edgerton's aim here is nothing short of a radical repositioning of our sense of ourselves as a nation. It's a startling book, and an unexpected thesis ... I'll be reading [it] over and over, and for years to come.'
*The Herald*

Forget almost everything you thought you knew about Britain in the 20th century ... You will not find a better informed history of this country in the last century.
*Evening Standard*

Stimulating and bracing ... He demonstrates that the story the British tell about themselves - and how it is taught in schools and discussed in the public sphere - is bogus.
*The Times*

Unsentimental and rigorous rewriting of British history. ... It looks beyond the froth of political debate, takes business seriously and analyses government as much from Whitehall and administration as Westminster and politics.
*Times Higher Education*

Beautifully written and can be read with pleasure by the general reader as well as the trained historian
*Daily Telegraph*

Original, opinionated, scholarly, complex and immensely stimulating ... this ambitious and provocative book achieves something remarkable. It provides a striking new perspective on our past, one that future historians may not accept but will be unable to ignore.
*Literary Review*

A sweepingly, and ambitiously, revisionist account of 20th century British history ... full of striking lines ... and a very important challenge to much of the existing historiography.
*Progressive Review*

Timely jolt to a deluded 'Bullshit Britain'. David Edgerton fillets national delusion and historical amnesia ... of a country that knows so little of its own history.
*Irish Times*

Edgerton is an extraordinary historian ... Written with bracing élan, Rise and Fall generates insights at every turn. Edgerton set out to rattle "the cage of clichés which imprison our historical and political imaginations", and succeeds magnificently.
*OpenDemocracy*

... refreshing and immensely stimulating, and should be compulsory reading for anyone wanting to understand the reality of twentieth-century Britain. Lewis Namier, another historian known for his combative brand of scholarship, viewed iconoclasm as the judge of a great historian, that having produced an account of a period 'others should not be able to practise within its sphere in the terms of the preceding era'. Edgerton has certainly achieved this.
*History*