A queen's death and a king's coronation. Rising mass media and declining public morals. Splits in all the major political parties and a new wave of social activism. War abroad and strikes at home. Welcome to Edwardian England. When Queen Victoria died in 1901 it was the end of an era. Britain's dominance stretched across seven continents and its ruling classes were wealthier than ever before. Many later remembered the decade or so that followed as the long afternoon of an empire where the sun never set. Yet the Edwardians themselves were acutely aware that the country was in a state of flux; the seismic change that they felt would transform modern Britain forever. In Little Englanders, Alwyn Turner reconsiders the Edwardian era as a time of profound social change, with the rise of women's suffrage and the labour movement, unrest in Ireland and the Boer republics, scandals in parliament and culture wars at home. He tells the story of the Edwardians through music halls and male beauty contests, the real Peaky Blinders and the 1908 Summer Olympics, and Marie Lloyd, Arthur Conan Doyle and Winston Churchill. In this colourful, detailed and hugely entertaining social history, Turner shows that, though the golden Victorian age was in the past, the birth of modern Britain was only just beginning.

The Bay City Rollers were one of the brightest things to happen in the tumultuous 1970s, illuminating a dark decade marred by falling stock markets, a plummeting economy and industrial unrest.  Alan Longmuir, an apprentice plumber from Edinburgh, was inspired by The Beatles to form a band in the 1960s. Firstly, he enlisted his brother and then his cousin and via throwing a dart at a map they eventually became the Bay City Rollers. Success was slow in coming but when it did it was beyond Alan’s (and almost everyone else’s) wildest dreams. A string of million selling records led to Rollermania – a mass-hysterical fan reaction not seen since Beatlemania. Like a wildfire it spread across the world. The Rollers’ juggernaut was out-of-control. Alan Longmuir recounts his surreal journey from the Dalry backstreets to the Hollywood hills and back to being a plumber. Along the way he punctures some of the myths and untruths that have swirled around the group. Most of all, though, Alan captures the great adventure that a bunch of young boys from Edinburgh embarked on that for a few years threatened to turn the whole world tartan. Tragically, while finishing his memoirs Alan Longmuir was taken ill while on a holiday in Mexico marking his 70th birthday and died back in Scotland a short while later. It was his great desire that I Ran With The Gang should be released.

'Turner's seductive blend of political analysis, social reportage and cultural immersion puts him wonderfully at ease with his readers' David Kynaston 'Reading Alwyn Turner's account of life in the first two decades of the 21st century is a bit like trying to recall a dream from three nights ago ... uncannily familiar, but the details are downright implausible ' Kathryn Hughes, Guardian Weaving politics and popular culture into a mesmerising tapestry, historian Alwyn Turner tells the definitive story of the Blair, Brown and Cameron years. Some details may trigger a laugh of recognition (the spectre of bird flu; the electoral machinations of Robert Kilroy-Silk). Others are so surreal you could be forgiven for blocking them out first time around (did Peter Mandelson really enlist a Candomble witch doctor to curse Gordon Brown's press secretary?). The deepest patterns, however, only reveal themselves at a certain distance. Through the Iraq War and the 2008 crash, the rebirth of light entertainment and the rise of the 'problematic', Turner shows how the crisis in the soul of a nation played out in its daily dramas and nightly distractions.

A SUNDAY TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 'He writes with a tremendous sense of fun. The result is a rare thing: not just a serious work of contemporary history, but an unashamed, 24-carat hoot' - Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times 'Up there with the best ... Reading it is almost like an out-of-body experience' - Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday Perhaps the Brexit vote shouldn't have come as such a shock. In Cool Britannia's long hangover, every pillar of British society seemed to sink into a mire of its own making, from the Church to the banks to the great offices of state. Even the BBC lost its reassuring dignity (though the private schools were doing rather well: their former pupils were everywhere). We were losing our faith in the system. How did it come to this? Weaving politics and popular culture into a mesmerising tapestry, historian Alwyn Turner tells the definitive story of the Blair, Brown and Cameron years. Some details may trigger a laugh of recognition (the spectre of bird flu; the electoral machinations of Robert Kilroy-Silk). Others are so surreal you could be forgiven for blocking them out first time around (did Peter Mandelson really enlist a Candomble witch doctor to curse Gordon Brown's press secretary?). The deepest patterns, however, only reveal themselves at a certain distance. Through the Iraq War and the 2008 crash, the rebirth of light entertainment and the rise of the 'problematic', Turner shows how the crisis in the soul of a nation played out in its daily dramas and nightly distractions.