Twentieth-Century Britain: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions #024

by Kenneth O. Morgan

The last century has been a tumultuous one for the culture and politics of Britain. Kenneth Morgan's Twentieth-Century Britain is a crisp analysis of the forces of consensus and conflict that have existed in Britain since the First World War. Using a wide variety of sources, including the records of political parties and recently released documents from Britain's Public Records Office, Kenneth Morgan covers the full scope of Britain's modern history while drawing thought-provoking comparisons with the post-war history of other nations. This penetrating analysis by a leading twentieth-century historian makes for fantastic reading for anyone interested in the development of modern Britain.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, British Literature, Ebooks, 20th Century, Modern

144 pages, Paperback

First published August 10, 2000

About the author

Kenneth O. Morgan, Research Professor, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and Honorary Fellow, Queen's College, Oxford.

Reviews

[Max]

I know that this book is designed for people who don't know much about Britain, and it is meant to be short. Yet I did not find anything interesting as almost all of what is mentioned is known to be before.

If you're wondering whether you should read this book or not. It focuses primarily on British politics and foreign policy. Parties triumphs and failures, and wars or periods of economic instability that have contributed to shaping the Britain we know today. There are bits of outlines about art, literature and social life of Britons but nothing detailed or specific.

[Cgcang]

The writing is surprisingly uninspired, it's like the author never had a bit of fun with his work. I still don't know much about 20th century Britain and if I didn't know better, I might've ended up much less interested.

[Aria]

Brief, to the point and easy to read. Useful introduction for those who know little about 20th Century Britain.

[JD Shaffer]

What a thoroughly disappointing book! I expected much better from Oxford.

Just a few of the problems I found (in contents):

(1) It completely skips the Edwardian Era (1900-1914) though it's called "Twentieth-century Britain"
(2) It has a tendency to say "how horrible things were" only to then say "but not all that bad!" (It does this several times)
(3) It is VERY thin on society and people's lives and struggles, focusing on political highlights and major historical points.
(4) It goes into far too much depth about arts, but only perceived "fine arts" like literature, theater, movies, later BBC... It completely skipped the rise of Fantasy and such (how can it completely ignore the presence of Tolkien and Lewis? Surely it could have mentioned Lewis in his war-time role as an apologist!)
(5) It seems to take at least 2 digs at Churchill, and for what reason?
(6) It suddenly mentions a movie like "Trainspotting" as if to prove a point as to how bad the drug culture was...
(7) It spends FAR too little time discussing what happened in WWI and WWII and what it meant for the British people.

In short, I get the impression that the author has a personal interest in the arts and literature of the 20th century (and thus the inordinate amount of space dedicated to them) and has something personally against Churchill (thus the apparent digs... one even counter to Churchill's personality).

So, in my opinion, I'd say "buyer beware"... make sure you check out a sample or look at other people's reviews. Personally, I think Wikipedia would have been better than this.

[M. Ashraf]

20th century Britain
WWI / WWII till the beginning of the millennium.
It is an O.K read it didn't go in depth in those major events, just quick recaps from Britain point of view.
Again most was political fights.
The difference of events and focus points after reading the whole set of Britain History in VSI from Roman > Anglo-Saxon > Medieval > Tudors > Stuarts > 18th > 19th and now the 20th, were very interesting.
It is a good and informative read after all.

[Stephen Bedard]

I really enjoyed this book. Obviously it can only give limited detail when covering a century of Britain but I found it a helpful overview.

[August]

Lots of useful information in a finely condensed format. Highly recommend for anyone living in the UK who grew up elsewhere. Thought the “Post-War World” chapter was especially well done.

[Sara]

for BH7 paper

after a while the exciting inclusivity of Morgan's historical analysis (cultural, intellectual, and social history are periodically paid due attention) starts to seem a little too neat...........

appreciated how he evaluated the relative importance of causal factors even as he went along narrating. it was inextricably linked to the narrative - almost on the level of semantics (to be specific, conjunction)..........

[Radek]

Very short, that is how I like history books :-).
But it was interesting as I don't know much of British history.

I especially liked the language. It was a little harder to read than other books I read (English is my second language).

[Joe Parr]

Things did indeed happen

[Inna]

I'm not such a big fan of "very short introductions" after all...

[Steve Mitchell]

Does exactly what it says on the cover