A. J. P. Taylor could never be dull, least of all in the essay. The medium was perfect for his qualities. In expression he displayed elegant brevity: in argument paradox: in knowledge lightly-worn mastery. The result was an aphoristic concinnity only perhaps bettered among historians by Macaulay.

Faber are reissuing three volumes of essays expertly assembled and introduced by Chris Wrigley. This first one presents a dazzlingly varied conspectus of A. J. P. Taylor's shorter writings on the nineteenth-century.

'Compulsively quotable and often very funny . . . The range, volume and brio of his historical writing are astounding'. Roy Foster, Independent on Sunday