All in all this is simply a difficult period of British history and Hattersley's book only confirms the point. It is beautifully written and wonderfully readable though it does not follow a chronological sequence. Rather the author jumps from one thematic episode to the next and it makes for ideal chapter by chapter reading.

Hattersley has a weak spot for the Edwardian liberals and their reforming politics in particular.

This empathy is not difficult to understand even from a Labour perspective. Until the accession of the Clement Atlee government in 1945, Hattersley's own party, Labour, threw up few empathetic or successful figures.

Labour's first government in 1923 lasted only a matter of months, its second, elected in 1929, collapsed in disunity with the party's Leader and long-time dominant personality, Ramsay MacDonald, leaving to lead a national government to rescue (as he saw it), a floundering economy. Interestingly, neither MacDonald nor pretty much anybody else blamed Britain's difficulties on the deflationary effect of Winston Churchill's return to the Gold Standard.

Hattersley definitely does but one of the interesting omissions from the book, despite a number of chapters being devoted to artistic, literary (a good deal of it Irish) and intellectual developments, is the mere passing reference to Keynes' revolution in economic thought which eventually showed the path out of economic darkness.

The book starts with bad news for Britain. The failings of Versailles, the loss of Ireland and the sordid lengths gone to keeping it, the path of India to eventual self-governance and the crisis of confidence over the abdication of Edward VIII, form the first four chapters.

It ends with the descent to war and the ignominy of appeasement. In between there are Baldwin and Chamberlain, two Tory leaders who in reaction against Edwardian gusto (or Lloyd George himself) marketed themselves as just plain ordinary.

What relief there is from this gloomy narrative comes from the development of modern mass culture like the cinema, the radio or 'wireless' where the establishment of the BBC became one of the era's greatest successes, to the new accessibility of the automobile to the middle classes.

And behind all this is the dignity of the unemployed of the '20s and '30s, the futile General Strike and ultimately Britain's great achievement of the period . . . to stick with democracy for all its flaws while others elsewhere were throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Perhaps the best thing said about this period in Britain's story is bad as things were, they could have been worse. For those unfamiliar with the story, this is a good introduction. For those more familiar with the period, Hattersley's take is always interesting.