Book description
'No two nations have ever existed on the face of the earth which
could do each other so much good or so much harm'
President Buchanan, State of the Nation Address, 1859
A World on Fire tells, with extraordinary sweep, one of the
least known great stories of British and American history.
As America descended into Civil War, British loyalties were torn
between support for the North, which was against slavery, and
defending the South, which portrayed itself as bravely fighting for
its independence. Rallying to their respective causes, thousands of
Britons went to America as soldiers - fighting for both Union and
Confederacy - racing ships through the Northern blockades, and as
observers, nurses, adventurers, guerillas and spies.
At the heart of this international conflict lay a complicated and at
times tortuous relationship between four individuals: Lord Lyons, the
painfully shy British Ambassador in Washington; William Seward, the
blustering US Secretary of State; Charles Francis Adams, the dry but
fiercely patriotic U. S. ambassador in London; and the restless and
abrasive Foreign Secretary Lord John Russell. Despite their efforts,
and sometimes as a result of them, America and Britain came within a
whisker of declaring war on each other twice in four years.
The diplomatic story is only one element in this gloriously
multifaceted book. Using a wealth of previously unpublished letters
and journals, Amanda Foreman gives fresh accounts of Civil War battles
by seeing them through the eyes of British journalists and myriad
soldiers on both sides, from flamboyant cavalry commanders to forcibly
conscripted private soldiers. She also shows how the War took place in
England, from the Confederacy's secret ship-building programme in
Liverpool to the desperate efforts of its propagandists and emissaries
- male and female - to influence British public opinion. She even
shows how one of the most famous set-piece naval encounters of the War
was fought, remarkably, in the English Channel.
Foreman tells this epic yet intimate story of enormous
personalities, tense diplomacy and torn loyalties as history in the
round, captivating her readers with the experience of total immersion
in this titanic conflict.
Amanda Foreman is the author of the international bestseller
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire
(1999) which has been translated into thirteen languages and won the
Whitbread Prize for Biography. She is currently a research fellow at
Queen Mary, University of London. She is married with five children.
