Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War

by Robert K. Massie

It was June 1897. Queen Victoria, seventy-eight, had reigned over Great Britain and its empire for sixty years and a Diamond Jubilee had been proclaimed. Saturday, June 26, was the review of the Royal Navy, the bulwark of Britain’s security and the shield of her imperial power.

the Empire comprised one quarter of the land surface of the globe and one quarter of the world’s population: 11 million square miles, 372 million people. It was a cliché that “the sun never sets on the British Empire,” but it remained, nevertheless, true.