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Contemporary punditocracy suggests that the Left has never grasped the joy of shopping, its late 20th–century political katabasis being no clearer indication.
Few authors are as well qualified as Paul Rouse to attempt this ambitious undertaking, the first scholarly overview of the history of sport in Ireland during the last millennium.
For more than 75 years the historiographical debate surrounding the appeasement policy of the 1930s has centred upon the notorious 1940 publication Guilty Men, in which a trio of left-leaning British journalists unleashed a vitriolic polemic castigating those men responsible for leading a hopelessly ill-prepared Britain into a catastrophic war.
It has become a cliché to begin articles, reviews or books covering research into Britain’s far-right by explaining how the field has blossomed over recent years. Studies of the inter-war period in particular have developed over the last few decades, from a few books and articles into a large and – for those who are new to the subject – overwhelming discipline.
Owen Hatherley’s latest book is a compelling exploration of one way in which the British political establishment and the British public (mis)interpret, (mis)remember, and (fail to) engage with history. The history with which Hatherley is concerned is the Attlee government of 1945–51, set within the wider era described mostly, vaguely, as ‘post-war’.
Tom Crook has written a big book – big in scope, range, and thought. It is both an overview of the institutionalization of public health in England and an interpretation of that event as paradigmatic of the systems and practices of pervasive governance that constitute modernity.
In Disability and the Welfare State in Britain. Changes in Perception and Policy 1948–1979, Jameel Hampton provides a scholarly account of the development of disability policy after the Second World War.
Historians of pretty well every field and period have long acknowledged that historical enquiry cannot (indeed, must not) be limited to describing the actions and experiences of elites.
Surveying the latter half of the 20th century in Britain, Professor James Hinton highlights the popular tendency to consider this period in terms of its characteristic decades. There is ‘the boring 1950s, the exciting 1960s, the crisis-ridden 1970s, [and] Mrs. Thatcher’s 1980s’ (p. 23).
To counter what he sees as the increasing influence of cultural studies, John Tosh has argued that historians need ‘to reconnect with that earlier curiosity about experience and subjectivity, while recognising that experience is always mediated through cultural understandings’.(1) As if in response to that plea, Balfour’s World sets out to examine and understa