Yesterday: The United Kingdom from Thatcher to Covid

The first major account of this transformative period in the history of Great BritainBetween 1990 and 2020, the United Kingdom experienced tension between unparalleled social change and a pragmatic political culture which sought continuity, compromise and gradualism.Thatcher’s legacy was slowly digested, Blair’s ‘New Labour’ thoroughly scrutinized and the decision was made after forty-seven years to leave the European Union.The UK’s long-established major institutions-monarchy, parliament and the union between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland-were sorely tested.Yesterday provides the first fully documented history of this pivotal time in Great Britain. Was the UK in decline? Brian Harrison points to Britain’s unsuccessful adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan and its relative economic decline, underfunded hospitals, sink schools, over-filled prisons and terrorism of both Irish and Islamic varieties.Yet there were successes. Harrison shows how the UK’s participatory institutio