Paul Readman & Geraint Thomas 
Culture, Thought and Belief in British Political Life since 1800 
Essays in Honour of Jonathan Parry

Brings together agenda-setting essays that illuminate the complex relationship between ideas and political activity in modern British history.


Ideas matter in modern British political life: culture, thought and belief are integral to the fabric of politics, high and low, foreign and domestic. They are woven into the day-to-day business of debate, policy and decision-making. This book shows how and why they have mattered so much. Inspired by the work of Jonathan Parry, it explores the cultural and intellectual influences on politics both formal and informal since the turn of the nineteenth century. Featuring original interventions by some of the world’s leading historians, the essays in the volume are organised around themes of central relevance to the understanding of modern British political history. They explore a wide range of subjects across political life and its intellectual and cultural hinterlands, including constitutionalism and international political thought, anticolonial activism, race and imperial commemoration, female political thinkers, parliament, monarchy and the law, the politics of religion, and patriotism and national identity. This is an agenda-setting text that will be essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the complex relationship between ideas and political activity in modern British history.


Paul Readman is Professor of Modern British History at King’s College London.

Dr Geraint Thomas is Fellow and Director of Studies in History at Peterhouse, University of Cambridge.


Contributors: Michael Bentley, John Bew, Paul Bew, David Cannadine, Matthew Cragoe, Tom Crewe, Ben Griffin, Boyd Hilton, Michael Ledger-Lomas, Joanna Lewis, Helen Mc Carthy, Alex Middleton, Susan D. Pennybacker, Kathryn Rix, James Thompson, Philip Williamson

Table des matières

Introduction

Paul Readman and Geraint Thomas


Part I: Writing Modern British History

Chapter 1.
Parry Passu: Jonathan Parry in European Echo

Michael Bentley

Chapter 2. G.M. Trevelyan, Landscape and the Writing of History in England,
c.1870-
c.1950

Paul Readman


Part II: Nation

Chapter 3. The Image of the Country House in Victorian Political Culture

James Thompson

Chapter 4. Hugh de Sélincourt,
The Cricket Match, and Englishness between the Wars

Matthew Cragoe

Chapter 5. Nation and Union in the Career of David Lloyd George

Geraint Thomas


Part III: Ideas Over Time: Narratives of Change

Chapter 6. Politics, Rhetoric, and the Serial Fluctuations of ‘Small State’ Ideology in the Long Nineteenth Century and After

Boyd Hilton

Chapter 7. The Socialist Lives of Beatrice Webb and Margaret Cole

Helen Mc Carthy

Chapter 8. ‘Great Contemporaries’ but Guarded Friends: Winston Churchill and G.M. Trevelyan Revisited

David Cannadine

Chapter 9. What Happened to Political Nonconformity?

Philip Williamson


Part IV: Institutions

Chapter 10. Liberalism, the Law and Parliament in Modern British Politics

Ben Griffin

Chapter 11. The Backbenchers of the Nineteenth-century Commons: Activity and Accountability in the Age of Reform

Kathryn Rix

Chapter 12. Lord Salisbury as Modern Political Man,
c.1880-1902

Tom Crewe

Chapter 13. Edward the Caresser: Monarchy and Religion in the Reign of Edward VII

Michael Ledger-Lomas


Part V: Britain in the World

Chapter 14. Irish Realities and British Liberal Self-deception: The Reaches and Limits of British Liberal Constitutionalism

John Bew and Paul Bew

Chapter 15. Latin America and British International Thought, 1880-1920

Alex Middleton

Chapter 16. Cambridge Beginnings, Oxford Departures: ‘Liberal Education’ and Imperial Legacies, 1945-70

Susan D. Pennybacker

Chapter 17. The Curious Case of Wales’s Statue to Henry Morton Stanley

Joanna Lewis


Jonathan Parry: List of Publications

Index

Tabula Gratulatoria

A propos de l’auteur

PHILIP WILLIAMSON is Emeritus Professor of modern history at Durham University.