Product Description

A second edition of the text originally published in 1978. This title is the third volume in the triptych by the same author, depicting the rise and decline of the British Empire and it charts the imperial retreat from glory, ending with the death of Sir Winston Churchill in 1965.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #158070 in Books
• Published on: 2003-02-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 572 pages

Customer Reviews

Never has history seemed to interesting
This trilogy of history made interesting and amusing with wonderfull odd letters and accounts poems and songs makes this the bast history read ever.I now understand so much more of my country and why things happened excellent.

Excellent, reads like a novel, not history!
This, together with the other 2 books in this trilogy by Morris remain among my favourite books. The rich storytelling, the attention to detail and the many amusing footnotes to the history of the British Empire are fascinating. I have been to many of the places Morris describes, and he brings them to life, even now.

Glorious writing in which details show the soul of Empire
This is the third in Morris' trilogy on the British Empire, with Heaven's Command (1973) charting the birth and rise of the empire, Pax Brittanica (1968) its apogee in 1897, and Farewell the Trumpets (1978) the 20th century decline, an "imperial retreat from glory".

Though she says "I have not been concerned so much with wat the British Empire *meant*, as what it felt like" the lucky reader is treated to both meaning and feeling. I think this is a brilliant book, and I can re-read it at intervals: the jokes! the footnotes! the titillating snippets of obscure information! the irony, the empathy, the glorious writing. What a joy.

this is not an elegy - but not an accusation, either. It is a mood piece, at times melancholy, at times hardboiled and direct. Much of the time it is suffused with gentle irony, and then suddenly you are jolted by a trenchant sentence, as in summarizing Delamere's and Lugard's ideas of empire: "the Kenya Africans would be serfs; the Nigerians, exhibits in a folk museum." It is pithy and to the point. it is also tinged with an affectionate melancholy. In carefully sought-out detail, we get the spirit of empire, and the ridiculousness; beauty, dirt, blood and waste. There are fascinating vignettes of personalities like Smuts, Mary kingsley, Gino Watkins; of places like Calgary, Gallipoli, Magersfontein and Suez; we see Gandhi meet King George V.
I think it is a wonderful book. As Morris says, "it was time the Empire went, but it was sad to see it go." And she manages to make you feel the same, which is a pretty good accomplishment!