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Unforgettable as it was, the public response to the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022 was not without precedent. When her great-grandfather King Edward VII - glamorous, cosmopolitan and extraordinarily popular - died in May 1910, the political, social and cultural anxieties of a nation in turmoil were temporarily set aside during a summer of intense and ritualised mourning.
In The King is Dead, Long Live the King! Martin Williams charts a period of tension and transition as one era slipped away and another took shape. Witnessed by a diverse but interconnected cast of characters - crowned heads and Cabinet ministers, debutantes and suffragettes, artists and murderers - here is the swansong of Edwardian Britain. Set against a backdrop of bereavement and parliamentary crisis overshadowed by the gathering clouds of war, we see a people caught between past and future, tradition and modernity, as they unite to bid farewell to a much-loved monarch who had personified his age.
From Buckingham Palace to Bloomsbury, and from the lying-in-state in Westminster Hall to a now legendary Royal Ascot enveloped in black, this is a vivid evocation of a world on the brink of seismic upheaval.
