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ISSN 1749-8155

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Review Date: 
8 Aug 2013

In 1920, Sir Lionel Abrahams, an Assistant Under Secretary of State at the India Office, likened India’s finances in Britain to ‘rivers running into a lake on one side and so many rivers running out of the lake at the other side’.

Review Date: 
17 Jul 2013

During the long 18th century imported foodstuffs came to play a central role in the everyday experiences of British people. Women sipped tea in parlours and drawing rooms, while men walked out to coffee houses, taking snuff as they strode, before returning home later to enjoy a dinner of savoury dishes and sweet delicacies laced with sugar and spice.

Review Date: 
6 Jun 2013

Money in the Medieval English Economy: 973–1489 is an insightful and wide-ranging book on money and its place in the medieval English economy, covering the period that began in 973 with the decree that there should be a single coinage in England, and which ended in 1489 with the institution of the pound coin.

Review Date: 
30 May 2013

During the 19th century print became an industrial product. In 1800 the speed at which text could be put to paper remained governed by the rhythmic operations of the hand press, an invention very little changed since moveable type printing appeared in Europe in the mid-fifteenth century. At the very best, two skilled operators working together could print 250 single-sided sheets per hour.

Review Date: 
17 Jan 2013

The jacket cover of Peter Hennessy’s new work describes the author as ‘the UK’s leading contemporary historian’, a reputation soundly based on a string of highly regarded books such as Cabinet, The Hidden Wiring, Whitehall and The Secret State, as well as on his high profile as a media presenter and commentator.

Review Date: 
17 Jan 2013

Every day humans must do three things: convert energy into goods and services, adapt to the natural environment, and accept and manage risk.(1) With rare exceptions this agenda has been addressed through group affiliation whether a simple family unit or institutions that have arisen in step with the development of large-scale social complexity, industrialization and ca

Review Date: 
9 Jan 2012

A top-notch monograph in the Cambridge imperial and post-colonial studies series, this book reflects the kind of thorough coverage of issues plus analytical depth that one has come to expect from doctoral research in Commonwealth history at Oxford University.

Review Date: 
13 Dec 2012

If we survey the historical profession at the moment, there are plenty of academic squabbles going on, but the great debates that once divided historians seem to be in short supply. Time was when contests over the standard of living during the industrial revolution or about post-modernism and its application to the study of history would drive scholars into a frenzy of position taking.

Review Date: 
13 Dec 2012

Where does the history of consumption happen? The answer would be easy for the history of production: the workplace. Historians can use a well-understood taxonomy to organise their research: the farm, the factory, the office and so on. The history of consumption has never had this precision, thanks to the less location-specific nature of consuming.

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