Each of the thirty essays here penetrates to the root of a character, a problem, a style, an idea, drawn from the recent British past. Clear-eyed, acerbic, witty, David Cannadine makes the ideal guide for a tour of the past and companion as one considers the present. Mr. Cannadine is professor of history at Columbia University and author of The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy and Lords and Landlords: The Aristocracy and the Towns, 1774-1967.