Samuel Hynes described the Edwardian era as a "leisurely time when women wore picture hats and did not vote, when the rich were not ashamed to live conspicuously, and the sun never set on the British flag.

[2] The Edwardian period is sometimes portrayed as a romantic golden age of long summer days and garden parties, basking in a sun that never set on the British Empire.

[2][5] Historian Lawrence James argued that the leaders felt increasingly threatened by rival powers such as Germany, Russia, and the United States.

The party had many strengths, appealing to voters supportive of imperialism, tariffs, the Church of England, a powerful Royal Navy, and traditional hierarchical society.

[11] In the first years of the twentieth century, the Conservative government, with Arthur Balfour as Prime Minister, had numerous successes in foreign policy, defence, and education, as well as solutions for the issues of alcohol licensing and land ownership for the tenant farmers of Ireland.

He stepped up the government's radicalism, especially in the "People's Budget" of 1909 that proposed to fund expanded social welfare programmes with new taxes on land and high incomes.

[31] Liberals in 1906–1911 passed major legislation designed to reform politics and society, such as the regulation of working hours, National Insurance and the beginnings of the welfare state, as well as curtailing the power of the House of Lords.

The cost was high, however, as the government was required by the King to call two general elections in 1910 to validate its position and ended up frittering away most of its large majority, with the balance of power held by Labour and Irish Parliamentary Party members.

Bismarck was removed by an aggressive young Kaiser Wilhelm in 1890, effectively decentralizing the Bismarckian Order that had been shrewdly managed, and empowering French efforts to isolate Germany.

With the formation of the Triple Entente, Germany began to feel encircled: to the West lay France, with whom rivalry was awakening after a generation of dormancy following the Franco-Prussian War, to the East sat Russia, whose rapid industrialization worried Berlin and Vienna.

[35] Joseph Chamberlain, who played a major role in foreign policy in the late 1890s under the Salisbury government, repeatedly tried to open talks with Germany about some sort of alliance.

Britain's alignment was a reaction to an assertive German foreign policy and the build-up of its navy from 1898 which led to the Anglo-German naval arms race.

The Liberals were highly moralistic, and by 1914 they were increasingly convinced that German aggression violated international norms, and specifically that its invasion of neutral Belgium was completely unacceptable in terms of morality, of Britain and Germany's obligations under the Treaty of London, and of British policy against any one power controlling the continent of Europe.

The expectation among the generals was that because of industrial advances any future war would produce a quick victory for the side that was better-prepared, better armed, and faster to move.

No one saw that the innovations of recent decades—high explosives, long-range artillery and machine guns—were defensive weapons that practically guaranteed defeat of massed infantry attacks with very high casualties.

It made every other class of battleship obsolete and, supported by a global network of coaling stations and telegraph cables, enabled Britain to stay well ahead in naval affairs.

The period of unrest was labelled "great" not because of its scale, but due to the level of violence employed by both the state and labourers; including deaths of strikers at the hands of police and sabotage on the part of the workers.

The long-term result was seen in the strength of waterfront organisation on the Clyde River, marked as it was by the emergence of independent locally based unions among both dockers and seamen.

While there was a majority of support for suffrage in Parliament, the ruling Liberal Party refused to allow a vote on the issue; the result of which was an escalation in the suffragette campaign.

In addition to fearing legal reprimands, many physicians did not condone abortion because they viewed it as an immoral procedure potentially endangering a woman's life.

[71] Feminists of the era focused on educating and finding jobs for women, leaving aside the controversial issues of contraceptives and abortion, which in popular opinion were often related to promiscuity and prostitution.

The law restricted relief for unemployed, able-bodied male workers, due to the prevailing view that they would find work in the absence of financial assistance.

[84] The Edwardian Era saw a decrease in the trend for voluminous, heavy skirts:[85] The turn of the century saw the rise of popular journalism aimed at the lower middle class and tending to deemphasise highly detailed political and international news, which remain the focus of a handful of low-circulation prestige newspapers.

"[93] In fiction, some of the best-known names are J. M. Barrie, Arnold Bennett, G. K. Chesterton, Arthur Conan Doyle, Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, John Galsworthy, Kenneth Grahame, M. R. James, Rudyard Kipling, A.

Apart from these famous writers, this was a period when a great number of novels and short stories were being published, and a significant distinction between "highbrow" literature and popular fiction emerged.

Henry Wood, Edward Elgar, Gustav Holst, Arnold Bax, George Butterworth, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Thomas Beecham were all active.

[95] The new technology of wax cylinders and gramophone records played on phonographs and talking machines, made live performances permanently available for repetition at any time.

In spite of the popularity of Art Nouveau in Europe, the Edwardian Baroque style of architecture was widely favoured for public structures and was a revival of Christopher Wren–inspired designs of the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

[98] Filmmakers Mitchell and Kenyon documented many scenes from Britain and Ireland from 1900 to 1907, sports, parades, factory exits, parks, city streets, boating and the like.

[102] Aston Villa maintained their position as the pre-eminent football team of the era, winning the FA Cup for the fourth time in 1904–05 and their sixth League title in 1909–10.