Britain's leading contemporary historian revisits and expounds upon the grand themes that have run throughout twentieth and twenty-first-century Britain, including the abiding trends of the post-war era Britain's persistent impulse to punch well above its weight in the world; the sustenance of a nuclear weapons policy which has accompanied that impulse and the secrecy that has too often concealed it; the contrasting styles and achievements of post-war prime ministers from Attlee to Cameron; the successes and failures of major constitutional reform.