Distilling the Frenzy: Writing the History of One's Own Times - Hardcover

A wonderful half-term report on the Coalition... The book is an engaging testament by someone who has done so much to bring good history and good writing to a wide audience and show it is fun. --London Evening Standard

"As you would expect from Hennessy, his account is lively, personal, pungent, entertaining and instructive, while acutely conscious of the wreckage of predictions past . It s also full of incidental detail which will resonate particularly with those of his age... I found this discursive account such a generous, cheering and stimulating read" --The Oldie

Britain's leading contemporary historian revisits and exounds upon the grand themes that have run throughout twentieth and twenty first century Britain, including the abiding trends of the postwar era - Britain's persistent impulse to punch well above its weight in the world; the sustenance of a nuclear weapons policy which has accompanied that impulse and the secrecy that has too often concealed it; the contrasting styles and achievements of post-war prime ministers from Attlee to Cameron; the successes and failures of major constitutional reform. As importantly, in Distilling the Frenzy a genuine heavyweight of British scholarship lays bear the contemporary historian's art for all to see, exposing the fine line between observation and felt experience, whilst incorporating elements of autobiography that gives the book a poignancy thaat is lacking in other grand historial works. This is the story of Britain's century through the eyes of it's most celebrated chronicler. A major work of our time.