The presiding figure in this third volume of Hennessy's history of post-war Britain is Harold Macmillan. The cultural climate it taps into is largely shaped by the threat of the Cold War. Looks at the political, economic, cultural and social.

Peter Hennessy is one of Britain's most celebrated historians, 'who has himself become something of a national institution' (Ben Pimlott). He is Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History at Queen Mary University of London. His previous books include this book's two immediate predecessors, Never Again: Britain 1945-51 (1992, winner of the Duff Cooper Prize and the NCR Prize for Non-fiction) and Having it so Good: Britain in the Fifties (2006, winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Writing). His other books include Cabinet (1986), Whitehall (1989), The Prime Minister: The Office and Its Holders Since 1945 (2000), The Secret State: Preparing for the Worst (2002, 2010) and, co-authored with James Jinks, The Silent Deep: The Royal Navy Submarine Service Since 1945 (2015, winner of the Duke of Westminster's Award for Military Literature and the Mountbatten Maritime Award). He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2003 and created an independent crossbench life peer as Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield in 2010.