The Twilight Years: The Paradox of Britain Between the Wars - Paperback

by Richard Overy (Author)

"Thought-provoking and illuminating...Overy's study of British culture between the wars is absorbing and unexpectedly moving."
-The New York Times Book Review

Original, entertaining, and ever-surprising, The Twilight Years tells the story of how an abiding fear of war influenced English life in the aftermath of World War I. Britain had become a laboratory for modern thought and experimentations, from eugenics to Freud's unconscious. And drawing upon these innovative ideas and concepts, intellectuals, politicians, scientists, and artists-among them Arnold Toynbee, Aldous Huxley, and H.G. Wells-grappled with a creeping fear that the West was staring down the end of civilization. The Twilight Years speaks to the frightening power of ideas in a rapidly changing world.

Author Biography

Richard Overy is Professor of History at the University of Exeter and one of Britain's most distinguished historians and an internationally renowned scholar of World War II. He is the recipient of the Hessell-Tiltman Prize, the Wolfson History Prize, the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize and is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Historical Society. His many works include Blood and Ruins, The Bombing War, Dictators and The Morbid Age.