Staring at God

A brilliant history: The first serious and really wide-ranging history of the Home Front during the Great War for decades. Scholarly, objective and extremely well-written. A masterclass … that ought to be taught in schools. It is filled with surprising revelations … and empathy. Heffer’s eye for the telling detail is evident on almost every page. – Professor Andrew Roberts, 5* * Telegraph *
Gloriously rich and spirited … colourful, character-driven history … it zips along, leavened by so many wonderful cultural and social details. – Dominic Sandbrook * The Sunday Times *
Fresh insights, vast scope and caustic judgement. Possibly the finest, most comprehensive analysis of the home front in the Great War ever produced. Compelling reading. * Literary Review *
Enlightening … Robust opinion, an eye for telling detail and a gift for bringing historical figures alive … An epic, ambitious book. – History Books of the Year * Daily Mail *
Staring at God is a vast compendium of atrocious political conduct. Refreshing … [The book]’s length is due to the author’s enormous enthusiasm. A trenchant history. * The Times *
A magisterial history. – Melanie McDonagh * Daily Mail *
The book stands out for its humanity as well as its breadth and detail – Allan Mallinson, Books of the Year * The Spectator *
The book I read with the most profit this year was the absorbing Staring at God: Britain in the Great War … A particular strength of the book is Heffer’s understanding - as befits a former deputy editor of the Daily Telegraph - of the role of the press; this was the great age of newspaper proprietors – Brendan Simms, Books of the Year * The Spectator
An epic history of Britain. It is every bit as good as its two predecessors. Illuminating. **** * Daily Express *
[An] admirable book … ambitious in its scope, content and approach … Heffer’s understanding of the personalities and the issues is comprehensive – Charles Vyvyan * Standpoint *

Simon Heffer was born in 1960. He read English at Cambridge and took a PhD in modern history at that university.

His previous books include:

• Moral Desperado: A Life of Thomas Carlyle
• Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell
• Power and Place: The Political Consequences of King Edward VII
• Nor Shall My Sword: The Reinvention of England
• Vaughan Williams
• Strictly English
• A Short History of Power
• Simply English
• High Minds: The Victorians and the Birth of Modern Britain

In a thirty-year career in Fleet Street, he has held senior editorial positions on The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator, and is now a columnist for The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph.

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