High Minds: The Victorians and the Birth of Modern Britain

Read before the author's "Age of Decadence"

A deep, serious examination of this period. Though lengthy, it was so readable I couldn’t put it down. His portraits, in particular, breathe life into even the dullest Victorians.

Heffer knows a lot, has a good fluid style, and is capable of structuring narratives well. He is especially good at biography. For me most of the charm of the book was the sympathetic treatment of minor figures, people you would otherwise never hear about. So if you are interested in the period buy the book, because you'll surely find something useful in it.That said, this is a frustrating and undisciplined production. Within its 800-odd pages are several possible books. There is the political story of reform, told in a number of vivid and well-paced chapters. It is, to be sure, colored by Heffer’s politics and limited by inattention to the Irish question, but he does a good job bringing out some of the drama and contingency of the time. Heffer's biographical talents find good use here. And in those chapters he makes an effort to do the historian’s job of giving you the relevant context and main players.Then there is a rather different book about the decline of Anglican faith and authority among a small group of elite intellectuals. Here context suffers and partiality rules. Newman is treated as a villain and the Oxford movement as a deplorable cult. Catholics hardly exist. Methodists and other dissenting churches are off the map. But even for a focus on Anglicanism, attention is spotty. The Colenso and _Essays and Reviews_ controversies go unmentioned. Anglican evangelicals get almost no attention. And while he starts the book loudly abusing Lytton Strachey and pointedly rehabilitating Dr. Arnold, at the end of the day Heffer is not that different from Strachey. His heart is with the doubting sons of abusive clerics.It would be idle to tot up omissions, but especially glaring is the total inattention to Herbert Spencer who, though now unread, was one of the dominant public intellectuals of the mid-to-late 19th century. Heffer fails, for example, to note on page 221 that it was Spencer who got “survival of the fittest” into circulation, five years before Darwin, and indeed he who, for good or ill, prepared the ground for the reception of Darwin with his writings on “evolution” from the early 1850s.Oh, and finally, there are a number of chapters on episodes of administrative history. Specific events like the politics around the construction of a government building can by fascinating windows into a different world. But at times it felt like Heffer couldn’t resist passing on every archival nugget he found.

Very interesting

Disappointing. Heffer provides a lot of social history about Victorian England but I found it a hard slog. This partly may be because he gives far too much credit to reformers who did the least they could and left matters not that much better than they found them.

Holy cow. Gee whiz. Wowser. This is a lot of information. That is, too much information. It’s as if the author decided somewhere along the line that having done all the meticulous research necessary to produce this tome he might as well set out all he found and let the reader sort the important from the, uh, arguably interesting. Not unlike buying a box of Raisin Bran only to discover that the raisins are few and far between and one’s enjoyment of them is dulled by how much bran has to be digested. Doubly unfortunate because there are a whole bunch of interesting stories lurking in there somewhere but not worth the discovery.

I haven't finished it yet. Don't know if I ever will. Interesting but too much too much detail!! I found the first chapters really interested, but got bogged down int the philosophical chapters.

Got this as a holiday gift from my son. Excellent writing as always. Physically the paperback is a joke. You can’t hold it, leave alone hols it open! I had to cut mine in half, which is insane for a $27 book! Buy the Kindle edition if you want to read this and not have a mountain of confetti!

See headline. Still writing my own 'history'. This book has helped clarify and focus things I thought I 'knew' over 55 years ago. HH.

trés bien

It's comprehensive and covers a lot of topics. I was surprised at the achievements of some individuals who have been forgotten over time. It gives a lot of detail on the parliamentary process and struggles of new legislation. I skipped some of that detail as I found that less interesting.

Each chapter is about a separate topic of social change during the period so you dont have to read the book from front to back, although it helps if you do.Mr Heffer has researched this thoroughly and there is a lot of detail in the book which I loved.

My goodness what a big read this is! It is very interesting, throwing a light on matters we take for granted now , We think about the trials of getting votes for women but getting votes for men below a certain social standing was a real fight as well. And even then their social 'superiors' wanted access to their votes to see who they had voted for! What battles there were in Parliament over education for the 'lower classes' , and the divorce laws! And I had no idea that the erection of the Albert Memorial had taken so long and involved so much argument.A thoroughly valuable read..