Between 1890 and 1914 the City of London was all dominant: Britain ran the legendary gold standard which reigned supreme across the globe. In Golden Years, David Kynaston anatomises an elite at the height of its powers, drawing on an unparalleled range of original sources. He shows how the relationship between finance and politics became ever closer, culminating in the Marconi Scandal of 1912 that nearly saw then end of Lloyd George's career. That crisis sprang from stock-market speculation, and this book paints a dynamic, three-dimensional portrait of the Stock Exchange, the City's pulse. The muscular, rumour-ridden club of gentlemen and would-be gentlemen is brought to vivid life in episodes such as the 'Battle of Throgmorton Street' during the South African gold boom, or the murder of a jobber by his jealous mistress on Lord Mayor's Day. Prejudices and passions go side by side with office grind and schoolboy humour, like the member nicknamed 'Channel Tunnel' because he was the greatest bore on earth.

There seemed no reason why this hectic, larger-than-life era should ever cease, and Golden Years closes with a picture of the City in the summer of 1914 never dreaming that its world would shortly change for ever. Brilliant scholarship and high entertainment merge in this compelling work, the centrepiece of a trilogy that brings the City into the mainstream of British and world history.