Book review: This history of pre-WWI Britain shows why some problems never seem solved

Tariff Reform is just one of the many themes explored in Vernon Bogdanor’s comprehensive history of the 30 years preceding the First World War.

English statesman Joseph Chamberlain began as a successful businessman before moving into politics.

In the 1890s, a leading figure in the Conservative and Unionist Party, Joseph Chamberlain, committed his party to the harmless sounding idea of “tariff reform”.

But what he had in mind was quite radical, turning the British Empire, which spanned every continent on the globe, into an economic union, like the EU is today.