Pax Britannica

By the time Queen Victoria celebrated her Diamond Jubilee in 1897, she had become ruler of the largest empire in history, with 372 million subjects over 11 million square miles. How did this phenomenon come about, and what was it like to be a part of it? In the magisterial and highly acclaimed Pax Britannica trilogy, Jan Morris traces the decline and fall of this greatest of empires, from Victoria's accession to the death of Winston Churchill in 1965. Morris’s magnificent grasp of detail is combined with a true insight into character and a wealth of anecdote, evoking the personalities that shaped the age, from Gladstone and Disraeli to Kipling and Elgar. Spanning six continents and covering more than a century, this superb work compares with Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, both for its scholarship and wit. Illustrated with contemporary photographs and portraits recording triumphs and disasters, as well as the everyday lives of imperial subjects, this is a uniquely authoritative and intimate record of a vanished world.