Finest and Darkest Hours

When asked about the greatest difficulty of being Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan famously replied 'events, dear boy, events.' Kevin Jeffery's authoritative and entertaining book is about the key events in British politics since the Second World War, how those moments influenced the years that followed them and what Britain might have been like had they not occurred. Finest and Darkest Hours ranges from Winston Churchill's accession to the premiership in 1940 through to the emergence of New Labour in 1994 - via the Suez fiasco, the Profumo affair, the three-day week, the winter of discontent, the Falklands war and Black Wednesday - to identify precisely just how significant these episodes really were. Finest and Darkest Hours combines vivid character portraits with subtle, often highly revisionist, analysis of the unfolding crises. It is a contentious, illuminating and vigorously enjoyable account of British post-war history.