Revolution: A History of England Volume IV (The History of England, Band 4)

Revolution continues Peter Ackroyd's enthralling retelling of England's history. It takes readers from William of Orange's accession following the Glorious Revolution in 1688 to the Regency, when the flamboyant Prince of Wales ruled in the stead of his mad father, George III, and England was - again - at war with France, a war that would end with the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815.

Late Stuart and Georgian England saw the creation of the Bank of England and the Stock Exchange. It was the era in which the Church of England was fully established and parliament became the sovereign body of the nation, rather than the monarch. It was an age of coffee houses and Gin Lane, and of newspapers and novels. But it was also a time of extraordinary and unprecedented technological innovation, which saw England utterly and irrevocably transformed from a country of blue skies and farmland to one of soot and steel and coal.

'Beautifully written . . . fluent, intelligent and informative' Spectator

'Coherent and subtle . . . delivered with a pleasing lightness of touch' BBC History Magazine

'Sublime . . . chronicles in grim detail a time of cruel magnificence' The Times