Description: A luminous sequel to the highly acclaimed first volume of Theatres of Memory.
Review Quotes: "The sheer scope and erudition of these pages is stunning ... an imaginative tour de force."--Terry Eagleton, Guardian
"Provocative, original ... a powerful testimony to the unending dialogue between the present and the past that is the essence and excitement of history."--David Cannadine, Observer "A stunning collection ... humane, optimistic, multi-textured, ever-meandering but always sparkling ... One of the finest and--paradoxically--most quintessentially English historians of our time."--Ben Pimlott, Independent on Sunday "A magnificent and irreplaceable collection."--John Gray, New Statesman "A provocative lens into both the remote and the near British past."--Publishers Weekly "Deeply researched, intelligently argued, lovingly presented, thoroughly excitable and immensely stimulating ... [Samuel is] as comfortable with seventeenth-century sectarians as with Victorian nonconformists, as familiar with the townlands of Ireland as the streets of London."--John Gillis, Left History "A rich fund of subversive ideas."--Daniel Johnson, The Times