The Labour Party, the Daily Express, West Ham United FC, Birmingham University and the opera Tosca all have one thing in common with the Queen Mother. They all first saw the light of day in the year 1900. Author and interviewer Hunter Davies follows the century through these people and institutions, exploring how we live now and how we lived then. Why isn't education as valued today? Where are the great philanthropists? Why does work have so little meaning when it's all people do? These are some of the questions provoked by Hunter Davies' interviewees and their candid recollections of being born with the century. Amid huge technological changes, it is the lack of community and the belief of most people that they now live in an uncaring world, that appears to define the century's end.