A rich and varied collection of essays.

Pugnacious and savage, eloquent and unpredictable, Paul Johnson sets out to entertain and to inform and to shake the complacency of his readers. These essays selected from the best of his weekly pieces in The Spectator over the last five years, range widely.

All his essays are liberally peppered with his astonishing knowledge of the highways and byways of the last thousand years of English history.