'Ackroyd makes history accessible to the layman' - Ian Thomson,
Independent The penultimate volume of Peter Ackroyd's masterful
History of England series, Dominion begins in 1815 as national
glory following the Battle of Waterloo gives way to post-war
depression, spanning the last years of the Regency to the death of
Queen Victoria in January 1901. In it, Ackroyd takes us from the
accession of the profligate George IV whose government was steered
by Lord Liverpool, who was firmly set against reform, to the reign
of his brother, William IV, the 'Sailor King', whose reign saw the
modernization of the political system and the abolition of slavery.
But it was the accession of Queen Victoria, aged only eighteen,
that sparked an era of enormous innovation. Technological progress
- from steam railways to the first telegram - swept the nation and
the finest inventions were showcased at the first Great Exhibition
in 1851. The emergence of the middle classes changed the shape of
society and scientific advances changed the old pieties of the
Church of England, and spread secular ideas across the nation. But
though intense industrialization brought boom times for the factory
owners, the working classes were still subjected to poor housing,
long working hours and dire poverty. It was a time that saw a
flowering of great literature, too. As the Georgian era gave way to
that of Victoria, readers could delight not only in the work of
Byron, Shelley and Wordsworth but also the great nineteenth-century
novelists: the Bronte sisters, George Eliot, Mrs Gaskell,
Thackeray, and, of course, Dickens, whose work has become
synonymous with Victorian England. Nor was Victorian expansionism
confined to Britain alone. By the end of Victoria's reign, the
Queen was also an Empress and the British Empire dominated much of
the globe. And, as Ackroyd shows in this richly populated, vividly
told account, Britannia really did seem to rule the waves.
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