For each instalment of this 20-part series, first published in 2006–7, an eminent historian was asked to choose the key year in a half-century of British history. It began with Sarah Foot's choice of the Danish conquest of England in 1016 as the Turning Point for the half-century of 1000–1049, and ended with Pat Thane's death rattle of the British Empire in 1956.

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