'The past,' William Faulkner once observed, 'is never dead. It's not even past. All of us labour in webs spun long before we were born.' Indeed we do, and this sparkling collection of essays explores some of the many ways in which the past and the present are inextricably linked in modern Britain and beyond.

Why are so many great European and British paintings found in American art museums, far from their places of origin? Why do the 'Cambridge spies' still exert so powerful hold on the popular imagination, so long after their treachery and betrayal? Why do we remain captivated by the fogs of Sherlock Holmes's London, which were undeniably real, but rarely appeared in Conan Doyle's stories? These are some of the questions that David Cannadine poses and answers in a book whose concerns range from the enduring interest in the paintings of Winston Churchill, via the lasting importance of biographical dictionaries, to changing attitudes to English country houses. In all these instances, and many more, the past is indeed still emphatically with us, and we neglect it at our peril.