The sunlight on the garden parties

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As a social and economic phase of English life the ‘Edwardian age’ had a longer span than the ten years of Edward VII’s reign. It began, roughly speaking, with Queen Victoria’s silver jubilee in 1887 and ended with the outbreak of the first world war in August 1914. Although a far from static period, it was characterised throughout by a jingoistic pride in British world power, then at its apogee, by a growing materialism and hedonism, and, despite an uneasy questioning of the social and political bases on which the Victorian age had rested, by an enduring belief in progress and Britain’s power in the future. The war was to change that prevailing mood forever, accelerating social, political and anti-religious tendencies and sapping the economic strength which underlay national confidence.

The sunny months of 1911 are chosen, in this deftly written volume, to capture the essence of that talented and glittering page of our history — a good choice, for those increasingly sultry weeks, during which the papers tired of reporting deaths from heat stroke, freak thunderstorms or holiday accidents, were the backdrop for momentous and spectacular events: the coronation of the new king; the sensational descent of the Ballets Russes on London, where, in the words of the impresario Diaghilev, it ‘conquered the whole world’; the passing of the National Insurance Act, forerunner of Britain’s welfare state; the dockers’ and railwaymen’s strike which raised fears of revolution and came close to halting the country’s economic life; the climax of the long-running constitutional crisis, when the House of Lords was finally stripped of its power of veto; and Britain and her Entente partner, France, on the brink of war with Germany over Morocco.