Anglia

A brilliantly unconventional history of England from the 1850s to the 1980s--from the bestselling author of Germania.

Traversing England from the industrial shipyards of Barrow-in-Furness, to the wind-whipped shores of Great Yarmouth, and the smoky jazz clubs of 1940s Soho, Winder reveals a place irrevocably shaped by its imperial past, and by all of those who, for better or worse, have called it home.

Winder leads us expertly through the country's modern history, beginning with the bizarre quirks of the Victorian era (warning: rats), through the crucible of two world wars, to the bright lights and mammoth change of the 1980s. Discarding the standard, London-centric institutional histories, Simon Winder reconstructs an England built not from a single narrative, but from an archipelago of distinct, self-contained regional cultures--each with its own global networks, eccentric geniuses, and hidden histories.

Anglia takes readers on an unforgettable tour of a nation improvising its way into modernity. Winder juxtaposes monumental engineering against the backbreaking reality of the Swinton coal mines. He traces the intellectual earthquake of evolutionary science that shattered traditional faith, and follows the brave, radical social crusades of figures like Josephine Butler against a backdrop of urban hooliganism and subterranean vice. Weaving in personal reflections on the author's own youth and family history, this is an elegiac, witty, and deeply textured portrait of a country.

Infused with Winder's trademark erudition, vivid vignettes of historical oddities, and self-deprecating wit, Anglia is a major work of narrative nonfiction that changes how we look at England.