The Fateful Year: England 1914Mark Bostridge1965: The year modern Britain was bornChristopher Bray History may be, as the historian R. G. Collingwood remarked, “a pattern of timeless moments”, but these three disparate books deal with very specific moments: key, catalyst years whose legacies are still with us, politically, socially and culturally. The “key moment” in 1846 was twofold: the Irish potato famine, and the repeal of the Corn Laws, which had kept bread at an artificially high price. The Tory Prime Minister Robert Peel, though described by Stephen Bates as “obscure and elusive”, is nevertheless the central protagonist. Peel is loved and hated in equal measure: loved, because he helped to establish free trade and cheap food; hated, at least by