"In this book David Cannadine reconnects the inhabitants of Britain with just what an odd and interesting a place they really live in. It brings together some of this most brilliant writing on Britain's past, and on the obsession with that past, which continues despite all efforts to shake it off." "Church dominates these pages. As modern Britain's savior, but also as a self consciously Victorian figure from another age, he sums up the strange cross currents of British life. Cannadine is equally compelling on the institutions and individuals who epitomize a realm caught between the past and the present - the National Trust, Gilbert and Sullivan, Ian Fleming, Noel Coward, G.M. Trevelyan, Stanley Baldwin and the iconic Palace of Westminster itself."--Jacket.