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A major new work by one of Britain's leading journalists and most acclaimed historians

About the Author

Simon Heffer was born in 1960. He read English at Cambridge and took a PhD in modern history at that university. His previous books include- Moral Desperado- A Life of Thomas Carlyle, Like the Roman- The Life of Enoch Powell, Power and Place- The Political Consequences of King Edward VII, Nor Shall My Sword- The Reinvention of England, Vaughan Williams, Strictly English, A Short History of Power, Simply English and High Minds- The Victorians and the Birth of Modern Britain. In a thirty-year career in Fleet Street, he has held senior editorial positions on The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator, and is now a columnist for The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph.

Reviews

A riveting account of the pre-First World War years . . . A gloriously rich history . . . Balanced and judicious . . . The Age of Decadence is an enormously impressive and enjoyable read.
*Sunday Times*

Heffer has given us a magnificent account of a less than magnificent epoch . . . Vital and energetic.
*Literary Review*

Magisterial.
*Spectator*

The Age of Decadence is an impressively well-constructed book . . . Heffer weaves his wonderfully diverse strands of inquiry into a devastating critique of prewar Britain . . . Heffer’s criticism of unbridled traditionalism is devastating and convincing. It’s also disturbingly relevant to the world in which we live.
*The Times*

Mr Heffer combines a scholar’s command of the primary literature with a journalist’s eye for detail. He writes with admirable sensitivity about both music and literature: a better account of Elgar or Arnold Bennett would be hard to find. He does a brilliant job of exposing the rot beneath the glittering surface of late Victorian and Edwardian Britain . . . He writes with such exuberance – indeed with such Edwardian swagger – that he leaves the reader looking forward to his next volume.
*The Economist*

A rich social history of a time when progress and cruelty collided . . . Heffer provides a painfully relevant story about the dangerous decadence of traditionalism.
*The Times*

Monumental . . . [Heffer writes] with much illuminating detail to carry the story forward.
*Spectator*

[An] intelligent, richly detailed and comprehensive survey.
*Standpoint*

The Age of Decadence will be consulted with pleasure by the general reader as well as by the student . . . So well written that one would not have it a page shorter.
*Daily Telegraph*

The rise of the middle class is just one of the grand narratives that runs through its pages, along with Irish Home Rule, women’s suffrage and a taste of Elgar . . . A really riveting read.
*Free Thinking*