The story of the British Empire at its maximum territorial extent, including a wider range of voices of the colonised than have ever been recorded before

'Marvellous... escapes the inane, balance-sheet view of Empire and sees it in its full complexity' Sathnam Sanghera , author of Empireland

'There is something Shakespearian about Matthew Parker's insightful argument that it was at exactly the time that the British Empire reached its greatest territorial size that the factors coalesced which were to destroy it. Parker has rendered a signal service by convincingly pinpointing the exact fulcrum moment in its half-millennium long history.'
Andrew Roberts

'An engrossing and wide-ranging account of the zenith of the British Empire - with all the contradictions, brittleness, ambition and hubris that moment entailed. Across Continents and characters, Matthew Parker provides a new, global history of British imperialism which feels both epic and immediate' Tristram Hunt

'Extraordinary. Matthew Parker's magisterial sweep through one day of British imperial history and culture plunges us into the global complexity of the British Empire, bringing the world of a century ago to fresh, vivid life. An astonishing achievement' Alex Von Tunzelmann