Ideas of Decline
Sheldon Rothblatt, 6 August 1981
English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850-1980
by Martin Wiener.
Cambridge, 217 pp., £9.95, April 1981,0 521 23418 2 Show More
by Martin Wiener.
Cambridge, 217 pp., £9.95, April 1981,
Peaceful Conquest: The Industrialisation of Europe, 1760-1970
by Sidney Pollard.
Oxford, 451 pp., £7.95, June 1981,0 19 877093 6 Show More
by Sidney Pollard.
Oxford, 451 pp., £7.95, June 1981,
“... at the top eventually produced that trade-off which Harold Perkin memorably called the ‘viable class society’, class without ruinous conflict. The Victorian compromise, Wiener asserts, lasted right up to the present. And so the work ethic was washed down in a bumper of roses and wine. In outline this is of course a ... ”