Customer Reviews
The period comes alive - By: Mr. John Conrad Mullen, 29 May 2008 
Max Arthur's book is up to his usual standard. In their own words, the joys fears & pains of ordinary people. Far from those history books which talk only of Kings & battles & court intrigues, this history brings to life the period. One is struck above all by the poverty & deprivation, by the huge social inequalities which today one would associate with third world countries, but also by the ingenuity of those who were trying to survive. Dirt, death & hardship are at the centre of this book. Reading the chapters on work, you understand whyin 1914 many joined the army hoping for a better life.
The only frustrating element is the patchwork or often short quotations. Complement this reading with "The Classic slum" by Robert Roberts ( I think)
Incredible portrait of an era - By: Anne Thomas, 21 Apr 2006 I wasn't sure what to expect from an oral history book sourced, as this had to be, from archive material - but I was not disappointed. From the first page you get an extraordinary insight into an era so different from today that only the simple honesty of the reminiscences convinces you that life can have once been like thatin the lifetime of our grandparents & great grandparents. It's an all-round portrait of the time - swingeing poverty, illness & infant deaths, lifein the criminal & underworld classes, politics & the suffragettes, travel, entertainment - & the yawning chasm between the lives of the well-off upper class & the rest of the country. It's an intensely vivid & moving portrayal of a neglected era of our history. If you like oral history, this is a 'must-read' - a real treat.
Brilliant insight - By: Martyn, 21 Apr 2006 My parents were both born during the Edwardian period - my mother is keeping going for her telegram! To me, it is almost a lost decade nestling between Victorian times & WW1 when the world really changed. Very little is known about it & it was an eye-opening experience to read this masterful book that explaims the world into which Mum & Dad were born. Only a 100 years ago and, yet, so different. I bought a second copy that my mother's carer is reading to her. Stephen Fry was rightin saying "An extraordinary & immensely moving book." Thank you Max Arthur.
A unique collection of memories - By: , 03 Apr 2006 Whenever I thought of the Edwardian era, the images I had tended to be of the genteel world of Upstairs, Downstairs, or of the supremely wealthy first class victims of the Titanic. Yet this amazing book immediately dismissed those ridiculously limited ideas. For here are the real Edwardians,in their own words, & what comes across most strongly is that their lives were, by & large, ones of hard labour & early death, of few pleasures & grinding, relentless, poverty. I was amazed at their descriptions - the conditions they livedin seemed more relevant to the eighteenth century than the twentieth. Max Arthur has chosen the accounts for maximum impact - and what an impact they have. An immensely moving read, I can recommend it highly - not just to those with an interestin social history, but to anyone curious to know how their near ancestors lived.
A SPLENDID READ - By: , 02 Apr 2006 This is a superb book, a window on the lost world of our grandparents & greatgrandparents. For those like myself, whose grandparents lived & workedin Britainin the years between the death of Queen Victoria (Kipling's 'Widow at Windsor') & the death of her son Edward VII (known to the caricaturists as 'Tum-tum'), the recollections of several hundred ordinary men & women - & children - will bring vividly to mind an era that, with its squalour & its splendour, laid the foundation of our own world almost a century later.
