With the death of Edward VII, on 6 May 1910, the anxieties of a nation, many of them still dormant, were suddenly released. The death of the glamorous, popular and cosmopolitan King opened up a wave of intense, ritualised mourning and the nation now stood at a crossroads. Behind lay an age many regarded as golden - ahead lay uncertainty, dissolution and chaos.

In The King is Dead! Long Live the King! social historian Martin Williams charts the story of this watershed period of tension and transition. Williams vividly narrates the fascinating moments of the years before and after the King's death. Here is the monochrome Royal Ascot of 1910 (which inspired Cecil Beaton's designs for My Fair Lady), when the Court was in mourning, the sinking of The Titanic in 1912, the constitutional crisis of 1910, the peak of the suffragette movement and Black Friday, and throughout the growing spectre of international war.

Uniting a core, varied yet interconnected cast of characters - queens, suffragettes, peers, footmen, murderers, writers - we see a country on the brink of modernity, all the while haunted by the ghost of its much loved, now departed, King. The King is Dead! Long Live the King! is the story of this unique moment in time and of the personalities it helped to define.

Martin Williams is a social, art and fashion historian. He has worked at Christie's, Sotheby's Institute of Art and Bonhams and he is a regular contributor to Country Life.