The Pleasures of the Past

Each of the thirty essays here penetrates to the root of a character, a problem, a style, an idea, drawn from the recent British past. Clear-eyed, acerbic, witty, David Cannadine makes the ideal guide for a tour of the past and companion as one considers the present. Mr. Cannadine is professor of history at Columbia University and author of <em>The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy</em> and <em>Lords and Landlords: The Aristocracy and the Towns, 1774-1967</em>.