Revolution

Revolution begins with the settlement created by the Glorious Revolution and carries England through the long eighteenth century to Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. It covers the consolidation of parliamentary government, wars against France and Spain, Jacobite rebellion, the expansion of empire, the loss of the American colonies and the prolonged struggle with revolutionary and Napoleonic France.

Political history is interwoven with the growth of finance, newspapers, coffeehouses, shops and the English novel. Ackroyd charts the early Industrial Revolution and the movement from an agricultural society towards towns, factories and mechanised production, showing how constitutional and economic change remade public authority and everyday life.