Revolution

Revolution, the fourth volume of Peter Ackroyd's enthralling History of England begins in 1688 with a revolution and ends in 1815 with a famous victory. In it, Ackroyd takes readers from William of Orange's accession following the Glorious Revolution to the Regency, when the flamboyant Prince of Wales ruled in the stead of his mad father, George III, and England was - again - at war with France, a war that would end with the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. Late Stuart and Georgian England marked the creation of the great pillars of the English state. The Bank of England was founded, as was the stock exchange, the Church of England was fully established as the guardian of the spiritual life of the nation and parliament became the sovereign body of the nation with responsibilities and duties far beyond those of the monarch. It was a revolutionary era in English letters, too, a time in which newspapers first flourished and the English novel was born. It was an era in which coffee houses and playhouses boomed, gin flowed freely and in which shops, as we know them today, began to proliferate in our towns and villages. But it was also a time of extraordinary and unprecedented technological innovation, which saw England utterly and irrevocably transformed from a country of blue skies and farmland to one of soot and steel and coal. 'This is a beautifully written book, and the narrative is easy to follow, while packed with information.' - The Spectator Equally praised for his formally experimental fiction, his inventive biographies and his ambitious histories (particularly of his home and birthplace of London), Peter Ackroyd is arguably one of the greatest writers of his generation. With a particular partiality for Victorian and Gothic influences, his most famous novels include: Hawksmoor, Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem, The English Ghost and his own re-telling of The Canterbury Tales and The Death of King Arthur. His non-fiction ranges widely, encompassing: London the Biography, London the Concise Biography, London Under, Thames: Sacred River, Venice: Pure City, a multi-volume history of London (Foundation, Tudors, Civil War, Revolution) and Queer City as well as biographies of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Blake, Charlie Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock.