Goodbye to the gilded age

JOHN JACOB WOOLF is won over by an exploration of the Edwardian era, which looks beyond the golden-era cliché to find a nation beset by a sense of unease

- JOHN JACOB WOOLF

The Edwardian era conjures images of country houses, tea on the lawn and long summer afternoons an era where refined ladies and gentlemen indulged in garden-party gossip and a spot of croquet. Cultural productions such as My Fair Lady, Mary Poppins and Downton Abbey have suggested something of a golden age: warmth and cosiness sandwiched between the momentous Victorian era and the great global slaughter of the First World War.

The Edwardian era – named after the eldest son of Queen Victoria, the corpulent and lusty Edward VII – was a short one. In Britain there was less innovation than the previous century and things were arguably more stable too: the birth rate and death rate had fallen, so the population was older and households smaller. The era has also received less historical treatment than the epochs between which it sat; as such, Alwyn Turner’s Little Englanders: Britain in the Edwardian Era is a welcome contribution to an oft-overlooked period.