Just Finished Reading: Hope and Glory – Britain 1900-1990 by Peter Clarke (FP: 1996)

Despite the difficulty of rendering 90 years of 20th century British history into a mere 404 pages I do enjoy the efforts made and appreciate the resultant overview that I can fill in at a later date confident in knowing a seal about the background. Books such as this provide the map, the territory, into which (God like) we can focus our attention on a particular incident (the 9 days wonder of the 1926 General Strike for example) or on a particular person (Winston Churchill, Lloyd George, Asquith, Chamberlin, Thatcher and a hundred other political giants of the age) in later follow up books now knowing that such events and such people shaped the world we live in today.

Of course, as with any work such as this much is left out. This volume is an unapologetic political history of Britain with only short confined forays into cultural history (there are very fine chapters on the growth of mass communication - the BBC etc and the rise in prominence of women in British society) and, to be honest is far more focused on England than its UK neighbours in Wales and Scotland. Ireland is mentioned somewhat more but only, by and large, as an English problem rather than an Irish history per se. But none of this came as any great surprise (or disappointment) as the author had already laid his cards clearly on the table for all to see.

What I did find odd (and a tad confusing/disconcerting) is how the author broke up the 90 years under review. He certainly didn’t arbitrarily divide things, as they are often divided, into decades but into political chunks of time often delineated by elections won or lost. So we have a chapter covering 1900-1908 and another (oddly that it covers WW1) 1916-1922. It took a little getting used to I admit although it did fit admirably into the authors narrative flow. Another thing that helped move things along was the author’s humour which seemed at times to be delightfully irreverent especially coming from a professional historian – from Cambridge! I guess that there have been enough historic events and characters (in the full sense of the word) for provide humourist grist for the historian’s mill and this author certainly found his fair share.

Overall the theme of the book was a challenge to the idea of (inevitable) decline from the 19th and early 20th centuries of glory and empire. Yes, after WW2 the British Empire basically went into a tailspin but it was a managed withdrawal handled far better than (for instance) the French withdrawal from Algeria and South East Asia. It is also unarguable that the Commonwealth was no Empire but it was never intended as a faux substitute. In one sense British power (or more accurately firepower) did decline substantially after WW1 but what we lost in one area we more than gaining in another – in the financial impact of London and our cultural impact which has long been well above what might be expected from a small island off the coast of Western Europe.

I admit that this was a dull read at times. Much like my history course in college this volume dwelt too much on who won what election by how many seats. Such things interest me hardly at all. However, apart from these rather narrow trips down our political history I found this book very interesting indeed and it has, rather inevitably, given me some ideas to follow up in future. Much more British history to come.  

[2015 Reading Challenge: A book written by an author with your same initials– COMPLETE (29/50)]