THE BRITISH IMAGINATION

From the acclaimed author of The German Genius and The French Mind a masterful journey through 500 years of British history The reign of Queen Elizabeth I ushered in an unprecedented age of exploration and discovery It saw an island nation hitherto a cultural backwater begin for the first time to occupy a realm of innovation and imagination that had for centuries been the domain of China India and the Arab nations of the Middle East With England s gathering greatness asserted by a swashbuckling generation of merchant warriors and adventurers and with the epic voyages of Magellan Columbus Vasco da Gama and Francis Drake charting the great beyond it became clear that a fortuitous position on the edges of Europe and the Atlantic offered ever wider imaginative horizons Indeed what came next is described by historian Peter Watson as the greatest expansion of ideas and knowledge the world has ever seen The British Imagination is a lively and deeply researched history that encompasses the five centuries that formed the contemporary mindset from Francis Bacon and the first Spectator to Mary Wollstonecraft Elizabeth Barrett Browning James Clerk Maxwell and Maynard Keynes from the Royal Society to the industrial revolution and from the first New World lan