Diary

W.G. Runciman

I began this series of daries with some reflections prompted by a re-reading of Halévy’s volumes on England from 1895 to 1914, and I propose now to end it with some reflections prompted by a re-reading of Tawney’s Equality. If the conclusion which again suggests itself is plus ça change, that is not because there have not been changes in our society which neither Halévy, Tawney nor anybody else can be claimed to have foreseen. It is because the responses to these changes, whether by academics, journalists, politicians, or the electorate at large, have been articulated within a set of ideological assumptions and constraints which are not significantly different under Thatcher from what they were under Asquith and Lloyd George.

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[*] Seeds of Bankruptcy: Sociological Bias against Business and Freedom, by David Marsland, was published by Claridge on 31 March (238 pp., £12.95 and £8.95, 1 870626 40 0).

[†] The British General Election of 1987 was published by Macmillan on 14 April (379 pp., £29.50 and £14.95,0 333 44612 7).