A magisterial work of narrative history, hailed in Britain as the best one-volume account of the British Empire and an outstanding book (The Times Literary Supplement).

Brendon tells this story with brio and brilliance; covering a vast canvas, he fills it with vivid firsthand accounts of life in the colonies and intimate portraits of the sometimes eccentric British officials who administered them. It is all herefrom brief lives to telling anecdotes to comic episodes to symbolic moments. Panoramic in scope and riveting in detail, this is narrative history at its finest.