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“... Historians are subject to a peculiar occupational hazard. Not only must they, like other scholars and scientists, leave no stone unturned until they have reached a satisfying conclusion to whatever problems they have set themselves: they must also – or so the convention of their craft seems to require – take the reader through most of their sifting of the evidence ...”

“... revolution.) Of the three more theoretical pieces in the book, I found the review essay on C.B. Macpherson distinctly disappointing. It is the kind of condescending overkill which, however justified, reflects badly on its author. The essay on ‘Practising History and Social Science on “Realist” Assumptions’ is ambitious, interesting, but finally too ...”

“... Lawrence Stone, R.H. Tawney, Rodney Hilton, George Homans, Christopher Hill, C.H. Wilson, C.B. Macpherson (and long-dead greats such as Tocqueville, Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Tonnies) is his answer to the question of why fully-fledged industrial capitalism first took off in England. This has usually been thought to be the same question as ‘how did ...”

“... were made. In The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (1964), C.B. Macpherson argued that Locke in effect pictured the earth as being inherited by the industrious and the rational. Locke judged idiots to lack the mental tackle required to exercise the individual autonomy regarded as the basis of the new Whig political philosophy ...”

“... how to play with political ideas and move them around without being hypnotised by them. Professor Macpherson’s book, in Oxford’s new ‘Past Masters’ series, is an elegant and stimulating presentation of Burke’s ideas, printed on revolting paper of the type familiar to users of penny jotters in World War Two. ...”

“... over the new landscape and trying to make sense of this ‘possessive individualism’, as C.B. Macpherson was to dub it three centuries later. In the argument between Macpherson and Milton Friedman, both sides recognised, as Marx had, its explosive power. They differed as to whether its social effects were malign or ...”