People, not abstract ideas, make history and in this volume A.N. Wilson has pieced together hundreds of different lives to tell a story - one that is still unfinished in our own day. Here are the poor and obscure as well as the lofty and famous - each in the very act of creating the Victorian age.People, not abstract ideas, make history and in this volume A.N. Wilson has pieced together hundreds of different lives to tell a story - one that is still unfinished in our own day. Here are the poor and obscure as well as the lofty and famous - each in the very act of creating the Victorian age. Short-listed for WH Smith Book Awards (General Knowledge) 2003 and PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History 2003.