An empire on the edge: how Britain came to fight America

A new British account of the Boston Tea Party and the origins of the American Revolution, showing how a lethal blend of politics, personalities and economics led to a war that few people welcomed but nobody could prevent.
In this powerful and even-handed narrative, Nick Bunker tells the story of three years of deepening anger that led to the outbreak of America's war for independence on Lexington Green in 1775. It was a tragedy of errors, in which both sides shared responsibility for a conflict that cost the lives of at least 20,000 Britons and a still larger number of Americans.
At the heart of the book lies the Boston Tea Party. By the 1770s, Great Britain had become a nation addicted to financial speculation, led by an élite beset by internal rivalry and baffled by a changing world. When the East India Company came close to collapse, they patched together a rescue plan whose disastrous outcome was the destruction of the tea.
With their lawyers...