How the Great Exhibition of 1851 Shaped a Nation.
In 1851, Britain, at the height of its imperial self-confidence, invited the world to London to show and see the latest wonders of the emerging machine age. The unprecedented Great Exhibition, housed in an ultra-modern palace of glass, caught the nation's imagination, and by its close one quarter of the entire population had visited the famous Crystal Palace. The events of that extraordinary year ensured that life in Victorian Britain, and the nation's image of itself, would never be the same again.
In 'The World For A Shilling', Michael Leapman brings to life the Great Exhibition and the exciting age of invention and seemingly limitless horizons that it embodied. Highlighting the stories of the key characters who made it happen - from Prince Albert, who was credited with the idea, to the entrepreneurial Thomas Cook, who organised cheap railway trips to the capital - it also examines the fascinating tales behind the exhibits themselves.
These ranged from the pride of Britain's manufacturing industries and the exotic products of its Empire to bizarre domestic gadgets - Queen Victoria was particularly taken with a bed that physically ejected its occupant in the morning and the inventive Americans came up with a device for playing the violin and the piano at the same time.
Published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the Exhibition's opening, 'The World For A Shilling' is the entertaining and intriguing story of a defining event in the creation of modern Britain.
