The late Hanoverian period was exceptionally rich in culture, thought, and political activity. There were poets, in the shape of William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, and William Blake; military heroes, like Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington; statesmen such as William Pitt and Charles James Fox; and philosophers, like Bentham and Malthus.

Of the notable artists and craftsmen of the time, Laurence Sterne, author of the mock-heroic novel Tristram Shandy, makes an appearance here, as do the furniture maker Thomas Chippendale, painter Sir Joshua Reynolds, author Edward Gibbon (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire), and composer George Frederic Handel. On the political side, the author includes the "mad" King George III, the revolutionary Thomas Paine, the economist Adam Smith (whose influence is still felt today), and the great explorer Captain James Cook.