‘Turner’s seductive blend of political analysis, social reportage and cultural immersion puts him wonderfully at ease with his readers’ David Kynaston

‘Reading Alwyn Turner’s account of life in the first two decades of the 21st century is a bit like trying to recall a dream from three nights ago … uncannily familiar, but the details are downright implausible ’ Kathryn Hughes, Guardian

Weaving politics and popular culture into a mesmerising tapestry, historian Alwyn Turner tells the definitive story of the Blair, Brown and Cameron years. Some details may trigger a laugh of recognition (the spectre of bird flu; the electoral machinations of Robert Kilroy-Silk). Others are so surreal you could be forgiven for blocking them out first time around (did Peter Mandelson really enlist a Candomble witch doctor to curse Gordon Brown’s press secretary?).

The deepest patterns, however, only reveal themselves at a certain distance. Through the Iraq War and the 2008 crash, the rebirth of light entertainment and the rise of the ‘problematic’, Turner shows how the crisis in the soul of a nation played out in its daily dramas and nightly distractions.