Search

Two years after the death of Sir Robert Peel in 1850, Walter Bagehot asked his readers ‘Was there ever such a dull man? Can any one, without horror, foresee the reading of his memoirs?’(1) This was by no means a rhetorical question, for Peel had prepared three volumes of reminiscences to be published after his death.

This book sheds much light on the ascendancy of liberal values in the 19th century and their role in the transformation of the fiscal military state of the previous century. While using a wealth of secondary literature, including many essays and review articles in literary weeklies and monthlies, William Lubenow charts new and important territory.

The War of 1812 has the unfortunate fate of being wedged between two of the most greatly studied events of modern world history, the American Revolution and Civil War. Indeed, the looming bicentennial of the 1812 conflict promises to be overshadowed by year two of the Civil War sesquicentennial.

Paul Mulvey’s study of the radical MP Josiah C. Wedgwood is a labour of love. Beginning as a doctoral thesis at the London School of Economics, this book has been many years in the making.

The activities of W. P. Roberts, the 19th-century ‘miners’ attorney-general’, has long been a subject of great interest to labour historians. His significance for the history of British trade unionism was perhaps most clearly highlighted first in Raymond Challinor and Brian Ripley’s history of the Miners’ Association, published in 1968, and then Dr.

Peter Dorey’s strengths as an analyst of British politics and policy formulation in the 20th and 21st centuries have here been channeled into a timely historical assessment of the policy principles that have continued to guide and re-shape the Conservative Party since the late 19th century.(1) Dorey’s focus is on the role that Conservative attitudes toward economic ine

ProQuest Historical Newspapers has been in existence for a decade. The version under review includes runs of 30 newspapers, predominantly from the United States, spanning the years 1764–2005 and totalling some 27 million pages.

If British governments in the later 20th century have often been ambivalent or hostile towards electoral reform, the same could not be said of their 19th–century predecessors.

In a 2009 review article on the study of Ireland’s relationship with the British Empire, Stephen Howe lamented the polarity of historiographical opinion surrounding the problems of Irish identity in a British imperial context.

A detailed biography of George II in English has been needed for some time. His is one of the longer reigns of an early modern British monarch (1727–60), encompassing both the final military defeat of the Stuart cause in 1745, and the high point of the first British Empire.