Victorious Century: The United Kingdom, 1800-1906 (The Penguin History of Britain) Hardcover – February 20, 2018 by David Cannadine (Allen Lane/ Viking/ Penguin Books)

This is an excellent general history, covering the whole period, including the imperial realm, including reasonably well woven chunks of cultural material as well. Perhaps the most consistent theme is how feeble the great imperial dynamic was -- various governments consistently tried to run the empire on the cheap, and vainly tried to discourage new acquisitions. This is not exactly what one is taught in post-colonial rhetoric. An interesting perspective.

There are some strange lapses -- for instance, Queen Victoria is hardly mentioned at all, which, even if she was not as politically powerful as previous kings and queens, is pretty bizarre for the Victorian Era. Her son gets more text space, for some reason, as we head into the 1900s. Some of the political manoeuvering (and his is a very top-down view) is pretty tedious as the century grinds on (I really got bored around 1900-1906 when we have to deal with a series of Salisburys and Roseburys and such). At some point a decision was made not to have any quotations, which means that the text is univocal, and as such, ends up being earnest but frankly dull. This is not Simon Schama or other high rollers.

Cannadine has a personal tic which is very irritating -- (he puts equivocations into parentheses, and repeats them again and again, for instance on whether Russia was ever a real threat to India (or perhaps not?) -- and so on. There is a slight lack of editing here and there -- he repeats the same information without variation from time to time. I only caught one typo (1800 for 1700 on page 98), which these days is pretty good.

Overall, I would certainly recommend this as the best recent general history. For fun, I'd head to the source of all evil himself, Lytton Strachey.