Victorious Century: The United Kingdom, 1800-1906 by David Cannadine

Penguin, 624 pages, £10.99

In the epilogue to his magisterial history of Britain in the 19th century, David Cannadine quotes Winston Churchill recalling the “august, unchallenged, tranquil glow of the Victorian era”. It was an era Churchill could remember well, of course, in which his politician father, Randolph, briefly played a less than tranquil role, but as Cannadine shows, it was far from the comfortable, rosy period that we now tend to imagine.

He notes that “for a relatively brief span of time, a relatively small European nation came to wield an influence… out of all proportion to its size, population and resources”, and that much of what we now see as assured self-confidence was in fact born out of fear, ignorance and national anxiety. It was a delusion and a certainty that only slowly evaporated in the decades after the old queen’s death as the empire was dismantled, and Britain’s power and influence diminished, even though sentimental echoes remain to this day.

This is a brilliantly written and accessible book, the synthesis of decades of thought and research. It contains insights on every page and tackles a breathtaking sweep of Victorian national life with complete assuredness, from the politics of crown and Commons to Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, the Grossmith brothers – authors of comic novel Diary of a Nobody – and Gilbert and Sullivan. Even Jack the Ripper gets a look-in. A particular strength is the focus on the Victorian economy – a subject often divorced from general histories – and its effect on people’s daily lives.

Cannadine illuminates the reign of the “Gas-Lit Gloriana” and her subjects in all their energy, spirit, uncertainties, mistakes and successes. Enthusiasts for the Victorian period will find much that is unexpected; those starting from scratch can begin here. Insofar as you can ever say it about history, this is a definitive book.