Asa Briggs, Baron Briggs was an English historian, best known for his studies on the Victorian era. In particular, his trilogy, Victorian People, Victorian Cities, and Victorian Things made a lasting mark on how historians view the nineteenth century. He was made a life peer in 1976.
I absolutely love this book. It was always an interesting one on my grandads bookshelf, and when he passed away I was ucky enough to have it passed down to me to care for. It is very concise, easy to follow, explained simply, but extremely detailed too without feeling like you are overloading with information. It is one of the many books which helped me on the way to eventually study History at University. It's obviously not up to date now, but still, is a good read for the main facts regarding popular historical topics.
What a wonderful book! Full of useful and interesting information - a lot of which I just never knew! The only way it could be improved is to add maps ... why do books like this NOT have maps????