This engaging book provides a gateway to larger themes in modern British history through a set of fascinating portraits of individuals that explore important events and movements from the perspective of the people involved. Political developments are illuminated through chapters on John Locke, Charles Townshend, popular radicalism, and Margaret Thatcher. Religion and education are considered through essays on evangelicalism, the Oxford Movement, Charles Bradlaugh, and Sir James Kay Shuttleworth. Industrial and imperial questions are explored through pieces on the Great Exhibition, the Indian Rebellion of 1857, and post-colonial Nigeria. National identity and wartime experience come to life in the lives of G. K. Chesterton and of Barbara Nixon, an Airraid Warden during the Blitz. Many of the chapters examine the experiences of women, including single women in early modern England, suffragettes, and Irish nationalist Mary Butler. As a rich and humanized approach to history, this book offers readers a deeper understanding of key facets of British life in the early modern and modern periods.

Contributions by: Myriam Boussahba-Bravard, Grayson Carter, Matthew J. Clarcq, John R. Davis, Anene Ejikeme, Amy M. Froide, Mark Garnett, June Hannam, Susan Hanssen, Michael Huggins, Frances Knight, Timothy Larsen, D A. J. MacPherson, David Savage, W.J Sheils, Eric G. Tenbus, Andrew C. Thompson