From the time King Canute demonstrated to his courtiers the limits of his power as he failed to repulse the waves, anecdotes have proved a valuable source of historical truth. Details may be altered or distorted, but more often than not anecdotes prove accurate. Paul Johnson has collected over 300 anecdotes, and guides the reader from Richard III's murder of the Princes in the Tower to a scene between Jim Callaghan and Barbara Castle. British statesmen and politicians are recorded by their contemporaries in journals, letters, parliamentary records and biographies. The stories range from rows in the Houses of Parliament and dinner and garden parties, to the visit of a lecherous former American president and Churchill making a graceful recovery after he has pushed an older boy - a future colleague - into the swimming pool at Harrow.