The 1930s was the last decade in which Britain was recognizably its historic self, a country where people expected to live their lives as best they could and with a sense that they were free to do so. The balance between undoubted social inequality and the acceptance of the identity left by previous generations was a matter for all to resolve for themselves.

The writing was on the national wall, however. British politicians had no idea how to steer through the Age of Dictators. Hitler, Stalin, even Mussolini, flummoxed them. So did Gandhi or Haj Amin, the Mufti of Jerusalem, as in their different approaches they and their kind set about destroying the empire on which the sun was not supposed to set. Britain was fast ceasing to be an independent actor on the world’s stage, and this was bound to affect the way its citizens thought about the fate of the country and themselves. Churchill was the last British politician to take it f ...