This work is a collection of writings by David Cannadine, an historical essayist. Cannadinene's subject is 19th and 20th-century Britain, from Winston Churchill to Margaret Thatcher, King Edward VIII to Diana, Princess of Wales. The pieces included here explore subjects as varied as suicide and divorce, patriotism and empire, class and privacy, and they examine the cult of Victorian values as recently espoused and proclaimed by politicians and historians in Britain and America. Each of these essays evokes a personality or investigates a problem: the mysteries of class distinctions; the difficulties and dangers of being the Prince (or the Princess) of Wales, the malevolence of Lord Beaverbrook, the varied motives for imperial expansion, and the unhappiness of Harold Macmillan. They discuss (and sometimes dismiss) many of the most important - and notorious - works of history and biography to have been published during the last decade on both sides of the Atlantic. Directly and indirectly they illuminate the premierships of Margaret Thatcher and John Major and the presidencies of George Bush and Bill Clinton and the ways in which contemporary events have helped to shape and change our perspectives on the past. The book aims to shed new light on that unending dialogue between the past and the present that is history.