Boris Starling is an award-winning author, screenwriter and journalist who, with this book, has finally put his history degree of 30 years ago to good use. He is a Sunday Times top 10 bestseller for both fiction and non-fiction, and his first novel Messiah was adapted into a BBC series which ran for five seasons. He is also the author of the popular Haynes Explains series and writes regularly for several national newspapers. He lives in Dorset with his wife, children, greyhounds and chickens.David Bradbury, who assisted Boris with this book, is a long-serving senior media relations officer for the Office for National Statistics. He too studied history at university and edited the award-winning Statlas UK: a Statistical Atlas of the UK for the Central of Information and the Ordnance Survey, before joining the ONS soon after it was established. He divides his time between London and Oxford.

'This book feels like an early stocking filler. It is entertaining and absorbing… the statistical detail can be illuminating.’ The Sunday Times ‘A statistical history of Britain fit for the census year…short, readable and rigorous.’ The Financial Times

Boris Starling is an award-winning author, screenwriter and journalist who, with this book, has finally put his history degree of 30 years ago to good use. He is a Sunday Times top 10 bestseller for both fiction and non-fiction, and his first novel Messiah was adapted into a BBC series which ran for five seasons. He is also the author of the popular Haynes Explains series and writes regularly for several national newspapers. He lives in Dorset with his wife, children, greyhounds and chickens.David Bradbury, who assisted Boris with this book, is a long-serving senior media relations officer for the Office for National Statistics. He too studied history at university and edited the award-winning Statlas UK: a Statistical Atlas of the UK for the Central of Information and the Ordnance Survey, before joining the ONS soon after it was established. He divides his time between London and Oxford.

'This book feels like an early stocking filler. It is entertaining and absorbing… the statistical detail can be illuminating.’ The Sunday Times ‘A statistical history of Britain fit for the census year…short, readable and rigorous.’ The Financial Times

Boris Starling is an award-winning author, screenwriter and journalist who, with this book, has finally put his history degree of 30 years ago to good use. He is a Sunday Times top 10 bestseller for both fiction and non-fiction, and his first novel Messiah was adapted into a BBC series which ran for five seasons. He is also the author of the popular Haynes Explains series and writes regularly for several national newspapers. He lives in Dorset with his wife, children, greyhounds and chickens.David Bradbury, who assisted Boris with this book, is a long-serving senior media relations officer for the Office for National Statistics. He too studied history at university and edited the award-winning Statlas UK: a Statistical Atlas of the UK for the Central of Information and the Ordnance Survey, before joining the ONS soon after it was established. He divides his time between London and Oxford.

'This book feels like an early stocking filler. It is entertaining and absorbing… the statistical detail can be illuminating.’ The Sunday Times ‘A statistical history of Britain fit for the census year…short, readable and rigorous.’ The Financial Times