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Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Book Club podcast.

I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator, and this week I'm very pleased to be joined by the historian Alice Lockstone,

whose new book is 18, a history of Britain in 18 Young Lives, which comes out just about now in paperback, having been a colossal bestseller in Hardback and Blackwell's

Book of the Year, no less. Alice, what was it that made you think 18 was the thing to do a book about?

Yeah, well, I've always been struck by how when you walk around places like the National

Portrait Gallery, you see these figures from history and they're often painted or depicted

or at least they live in our minds at these moments of great triumph or success.

So perhaps, you know, later on in life often.

And that's because this is when they have done the thing that makes them famous.

But of course, it seems obvious to say, but of course people were at one point much younger.

They had all the insecurities and all of the unease and difficulties that many of us face today when we're much younger.

Things aren't inevitable and it's easy to forget that when you're looking at history and you've

seen the whole picture. So I guess I thought the age of 18 would be interesting to look at to

paint this picture of people in the much more vulnerable moments of their lives, these kind

of gritty earlier years.

And I think, I guess, anyone who's an adult has been 18.

So it's this kind of way to look at history through a lens which lots of us can relate to.

Well, that thing about, you know, it is this sort of magic number that, as you point out,

...