Lawrence Goldman

Lawrence Goldman was for ten years the editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He is the author of The Life of R.H. Tawney: Socialism and History.

Fiery Particle: Red Ellen Wilkinson

Lawrence Goldman, 13 July 2017

At first sight​, a new life of Ellen Wilkinson appears to offer readers a return to ‘old Labour’ principles, as articulated and put into practice by one of the party’s most famous women leaders. Wilkinson came from the north, represented the shipyards of Jarrow and always spoke for the workers. Yet this well-written biography surprises us: she may have been a founding...

Only Men in Mind: R.H. Tawney

Susan Pedersen, 21 August 2014

On​ 1 July 1916, Sergeant R.H. Tawney led his platoon over the top on the first morning of the Battle of the Somme, holding a gun to one young man’s head to get him to stop crying and keep...

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A Slight Dash of the Tiresome

Brian Harrison, 9 November 1989

Intellectuals – informed people who enjoy accumulating and diffusing ideas – were more prominent in Victorian public life than they are today. Public life was then confined to a...

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