Piers Brendon's magisterial overview of the 1930s is the story of the dark, dishonest decade - child of one world war and parent of the next - that determined the course of the twentieth century.
Margaret Thatcher, Rupert Murdoch, Prince Charles, Mick Jagger - four figures who have illuminated our age. This title reveals how each one played out a major theme in the new Elizabethan medley.
No empire has been larger or more diverse than the British Empire. Within a generation this mighty structure collapsed, often amid bloodshed, leaving behind a scatter of sea-girt dependencies and a ghost of an empire, the Commonwealth, overshadowed by Imperial America.
In his account of four characters, each of whose importance was global, each of them, in their different ways, 'monsters', Piers Brendon writes wittily, sharply and succinctly - and brilliantly illuminates an age.