British social history, for so long in protracted adolescence, seems finally to have come of age. The work of two generations of researchers, led by such avatars as Alan Everitt, Peter Laslett,...
In 1591 the Corporation of Dublin set aside as the site for a college the lands and dilapidated buildings of the Augustinian priory of All Hallows, which had been given to the city at the...
Francois Furet’s book, which appeared in France in 1978, reopens the debate on the nature and significance of the French Revolution. For a very long time, what Professor Soboul likes to...
In previous centuries most histories of the English Revolution were coloured by the rival ideologies of Royalist and Roundhead. In the past few generations the division has tended to be drawn...
If old sea-dog Thomas Coram’s mission had been to found the most English, the most 18th-century of charities, he could not have done better than launch the Foundling Hospital – which...
In one way or another I have now been teaching Modern European History for at least fifty years. When I looked back I realised with some embarrassment that most of the time I had been dealing...
‘Do the spirits teach Socialism?’ asked a working-class spiritualist magazine in 1897. The answer, of course, was yes. In a year which sees the centenary of the establishing of the...
This year brings the centenary of Trollope’s death. On the whole, the anniversary has been taken calmly by his countrymen: with far less celebration than, for instance, George Eliot...
‘When Herakleides was badly received by the citizens and was subjected to a storm of protest, he induced Hippon, one of the demagogues, to urge on the people to a distribution of land, on...
The title of this book means what it says: it is about England, not England and Wales. The exclusion of the Celtic fringe can be explained by the very real difficulties which arise for some forms...
Sitting in Waterlow Park the other afternoon, I heard a park keeper ask an old lady with a transistor, ‘What is happening in the Cup Final?’ – to which the old lady replied:...
When a marriage disintegrates in mutual misunderstanding and recrimination, it is no good looking to either partner – or to their families – for a complete and objective explanation....
Some fifteen years ago, in the course of reading up the history of technology, I came across an article by M.I. Finley, of whom I then knew nothing, on ‘Technical Innovation and Economic...
Is it a good thing that a country, after almost forty years of accelerating decline, has nothing more satisfactory to look back upon than a victorious world war with relatively modest casualties?...
Has there ever been a theme as much studied by English historians as the history of Parliament? At one time, indeed, it seemed almost to stand in for the history of the country itself: history...
Dr Davies claims that ‘very few comprehensive surveys of Polish history, written by British and American scholars, have ever been attempted.’ He sees himself as producing something...
When Darwin died a hundred years ago; he could reasonably have said, ‘Après moi, le déluge,’ because we are still awash with books and ideas for, against and about him....
The covers of two of these books display very similar views of Manchester, the ‘shock city’ of early 19th-century England. One is for 1836 and the other for 1851, and both embody a...