A History of Britain Through Books

Christopher Tugendhat was a European Commissioner from 1977 to 1985, after which, among other positions, he was Chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority, Abbey National and the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House). He is also a former Chancellor of the University of Bath. From 1970 to 1976 he was Conservative Member of Parliament for the City of London and Westminster South and a journalist on the Financial Times from 1960 to 1970. He is currently an active member of the House of Lords. He is the author of Oil: The Biggest Business, The Multinationals, which won the McKinsey Foundation Book Award in the US, Making Sense of Europe and co-author with William Wallace of Options for British Foreign Policy in the 1990s. He is a graduate of the University of Cambridge, where he is an Honorary Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, and holds honorary degrees from the University of Bath and the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. He was born in 1937 and is married to Julia Dobson, a psychotherapist and author. They have two sons and five grandchildren and live in London.

A journey through Britain told through seminal books of the twentieth century, from A Room of One's Own to Heart of Darkness. These books explore the attitudes and prejudices of the century and how they shaped modern Britain, telling the story of a nation undergoing enormous political and social change, both within itself and on the global stage.