In a brilliantly entertaining, living history of the modern United Kingdom, Andrew Marr traces how radically we have transformed through the course of Queen Elizabeth II's reign. When the Queen stepped up her crown in 1953 at the age of twenty-five, Britain was a very different nation.In this vital history, bestselling author Andrew Marr tells the story of modern Britain through the people who shaped it: from Sylvia Plath to Elvis Costello, Frank Critchlow to Bob Geldof, Zaha Hadid to James Dyson, David Attenborough to the Beatles. How did our activists, our innovators, our artists, our every-kind-of-mover-and-shaker define and progress this new Elizabethan era over the last seven decades? How did the seventies shape the eighties, shape the nineties to incrementally land us where we are today? And where exactly is that?