Volume I of Jan Morris’s trilogy Pax Britannica trilogy
Heaven’s Command: An Imperial Progress is the first instalment in Jan Morris’s classic Empire trilogy. It vividly portrays the rise of Queen Victoria and the British Empire, their journey across the globe and their search for Imperial progress.
In Heaven’s Command Jan Morris tells the epic story of the rise of the British Empire, from the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 to her Diamond Jubilee in 1897. In this celebrated masterwork she vividly evokes every aspect of the ‘great adventure’, ranging from ships and botanical gardens to hill stations and sugar plantations, as she traces the impact of empire on places as diverse as Sierra Leone and Fiji, Zululand and the Canadian prairies.
The Pax Britannica 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.
‘How many professional historians can write books that give so much pleasure? This is a book planned by an architect, fitted together by a craftsman, and polished by a cabinet-maker.’ Sunday Times
‘Her historical writing has tended to the epic: her trilogy on the rise and fall of the British empire, Pax Britannica, is a monumental work that feels as if it had access to every heartbeat under the searing sun.’ Guardian
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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