Volume III of Jan Morris’s Pax Britannica trilogy
Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat by Jan Morris is the final instalment the Pax Britannica trilogy. It is a masterpiece of narrative history that traces the gradual demise of the British Empire and culminates with the death of Winston Churchill.
Farewell the Trumpets traces the momentous decline and fall of the greatest of empires – from Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee to the Winston Churchill’s death in 1965. With characteristic balance, this masterpiece of narrative history describes the long retreat and final dissolution of the British Empire.
Jan Morris’s trilogy includes Heaven’s Command: An Imperial Progress, Pax Britannica: The Climax of an Empire and Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat. Together these three works of history trace the dramatic rise and fall of the British Empire, from the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 to the death of Winston Churchill in 1965.
‘The British Empire is fortunate in having found in Jan Morris a chronicler and memorialist who can do it justice . . . Morris writes with inspired gusto, firmly rooted in erudition, which carries the book into the realms of literature.’ Sunday Telegraph
‘The Pax Britannica trilogy demands the adjective “magisterial” more readily than just about any other series of books I can think of. It begins with the birth of Victorian ambition and ends with the death of Churchill. Written with all Morris’s characteristic brio it is a compulsive exploration of patriotism, of manly endeavour, which ends in elegiac retreat and submission.’ Observer
Dominion over Palm and Pine
When people ask me what they should read about the Empire, I suggest they go to the five volumes of the Oxford History of the British Empire, where they will find a mass of recent research...
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