So wrote Paul Kennedy of this lucid and comprehensive survey on first publication in 1983. The Second Edition updates the text to the threshold of the present. To the original span (1870-1975) -- which encompassed both the climax and the dissolution of the British Empire -- Keith Robbins has added an entirely new fifth section (1975-1992), which includes pioneering accounts of the Thatcher years in their historical context, and of the ambivalent relationship of the country at large with the European Community.