The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy

This book is an absolute must read for anyone interested not merely in the decline of British aristocracy, but in the swift changes wrought in British society, politics and literature from 1880 to the outbreak of WWII. Cannadine does cover WWII and the following decades, but he gives them rather short shrift, for, as the exacting and exhaustive main body of this magisterial work makes superabundantly clear, the British aristocracy was already in rigor mortis by then.What made this work so indispensable to me was that it showed the actual, very real, background for literary works written during this period: Waugh, Wilde, Wodehouse, Yeats and, of course, the Mitfords. If you want to know the reality of what happened to estates like Waugh's fictional Brideshead, you will learn all about the land devaluation, estate taxes and encumbrances on such estates originally contracted in order to ensure entail and jointures, but now spelling their doom. You will meet many, all too many, real life Lady Marchmains and understand more fully the social backdrop which makes them totally unsuited for the 20th Century.And, well, let's just take an actual case: Bertrand Russell. Primogeniture ensured that the gentrified earldom in which he came of age passed onto his brother. In previous eras, a generous codicil with annuity would have, nevertheless, granted him lifelong security. Unfortunately, due to land devaluation, his brother went bankrupt and lost everything except the title. Russell, too, lost everything and became a Socialist member of the Labour party, not entirely because of his ideological position and philosophical beliefs, but because of something deeper from which they arose: a visceral animosity to the industrialists and capitalists who now controlled the country. As Cannadine points out, there were really only two extreme positions for such disillusioned, disinherited aristos to take: socialism or fascism. Of course, Russell was a genius who made great advances in the field of mathematics and went on to win the Nobel Prize in literature. But, through most of his life, he had to support himself through lectures and writing; and, until the publication and unexpected popularity of his A History of Western Philosophy, he was almost continuously on the verge of bankruptcy. Even after his brother died and he became Lord Russell, he maintained that the only benefit that accrued from the title was the ability to secure hotel rooms. The point exemplified here, so well explicated by Cannadine, is that, after over seven hundred years of Earls and their ilk being the ruling, moneyed class, they met an end so swiftly and irretrievably at the hands of industrialism and capitalism, that these former members of the ruling class had no recourse in this unfamiliar world than to become quixotic Utopians, or socialists like Russell or quixotic Arcadians, or fascists, like Oswald Moseley.Cannadine is a wonderful writer, and in spite of the jumble of numerous titled names that pile up in so many paragraphs - Duke This, Duchess That etc. - which he must needs provide along with 8 Appendices and over 3,000 footnotes in order to provide the scholarly underpinnings necessary for the work's credibility, it is all surprisingly readable. In one section, Cannadine larkishly names the chapters after Shakespearean plays: Ireland: A Winter's Tale, The Church: Much Ado About Nothing etc.My attention was drawn to this work by reviews of a spate of books that have recently come out on this subject. The reviews, almost to a one, compare the new ones to this book, and find them seriously lacking indeed in the juxtaposition. I can only say that Cannadine's ten years spent in the composition of it were extremely well spent.Finally, there is the question of how one has come to feel about all these once privileged Peers after wading through this meticulous account of the upheavals that led to their downfall. I should say that any reader who has even only slight misgivings about the fast-paced, leisureless, de facto capitalist lives we all live now to some extent can't help but feel a touch of sympathy for these hothouse flowers pushed out into the cold.Let's allow the scion of a once powerful family to have the last word. Lord Robert Cecil: "I am unfitted for political life, because I have a resigning habit of mind."

I would give this book a 5-Stars rating for the level of scholarship but ended up giving it an overall rating of 4-Stars because at times it is a bit dull. There are occasional one-line zingers of low-level humor in describing a personality or an assessment of some issue that make it worth reading, as well as the phenomenal level of detail and analysis.The book describes the wealth, political power, and social status held by the British nobility that peaked back around 1880 and slowly but steadily declined thereafter. The most significant subject described is the massive land ownership of a few families: 750 families owned 10 000 to 30 000 acres and 250 families owned at least 30 000 acres. Fourteen families owned at least 100 000 acres. As an American, I tried to put this in an American perspective. The United States is approximately 40 times the size of the UK. Or, the UK is about the size of the US state of Oregon. In relative proportions, it's as if 250 American families each owned at least 1 200 000 acres or fourteen families each owned more than 4 million acres. That has never happened. I believe that the largest single land ownership in American history was the XIT ranch in Texas back in the late 19th century which consisted of a little more than 3 million acres.The book describes the numerous ways in which the nobility almost monopolized government cabinet positions and Parliamentary leadership positions prior to the 1880s. After that, poitical power slowly but surely slipped away so that by the 1930s it was almost gone. Similarly, the great families comprised the social elite with their London palaces and country manors. Many of the great London palaces were torn down in the 1920s and 1930s as the owners could no longer afford to keep them up. Hundreds of country houses or manors were demolished in the 1950s and 1960s.The book also offers some short comparisons to the new Amercian rich of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The British grandees were poor compared to the likes of Carnegie, Astor, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, or J. P. Morgan. Andrew Carnegie possessed a personal fortune of $400 million in 1900. That was equivalent to £80 million at the time. No British peer was even a tenth as wealthy as that.

Very comprehensive review of the Fall of the British Aristocracy covering all the main areas of wealth, land, power and social status. If you needed fifteen examples for every effect Cannadine describes, he has the data to hand, although as he freely acknowledges, he has not been trawling primary sources, rather going to the best books others have written. What he does do very well is to knit together all the various ways in which the Landed Gentry were under attack and show how this created the "Perfect Storm" to bring the whole edifice down. Also well treated in the final chapter is a comparative analysis with other European countries where the process happened violently - in contrast the amazing thing about the British decline is its quiet gentility - resignation rather than panic.The book itself is constructed logically, rather like an extra-long PhD thesis. References are copious and listed by chapter at the rear of the book and there is an excellent index.The only habit of Cannadine's which slightly irritated me (although on occasion it also impressed me) was the Amazing Amount of Arty Alliteration.If you find the prospect of 700+ pages too wearing, try William Doyle's Aristocracy: A Very Short Introduction, which as part of that excellent VSI series does what it says on the tin.

There is far too much repetition in this book and where one or two examples would be sufficient ten are given. The author seems to think nothing can be left out and every bit of his research should be mentioned in the text.Three hundred of the 709 pages should be consigned to notes at the end.The book is in dire need of a thorough editing.

A comprehensive survey of the decline of the British aristocracy from around 1880 to 1990. As a member of the Western Front Assiciation the parts dealing with the aristocracies contribution to WW1 were of particular interest. I note the author has been quoted in at least one of the studies of the run up to 1914 published around the time of the centenary so it is, clearly, accepted by other leading historians.

Good quality book. Very detailed information. Quite heavy for reading in bed.

This is a fantastic and well written book on a subject which is important to all of us, whatever social class we fall into! Good condition.