1. Le Goff, Jacques, “Later History,” Past and Present 100 (1983): 14–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 22–23.

2. Seldon, Anthony and Ball, Stuart, eds., Conservative Century: The Conservative Party since 1900 (Oxford, 1994).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. One notable recent example of such work is the Economic and Social Research Council–funded volume, Tanner, Duncan et al. , eds., Debating Nationhood and Governance in Britain, 1885–1945: Perspectives from the “Four Nations” (Manchester, 2006).Google Scholar

4. Pocock, J. G. A., “British History: A Plea for a New Subject,” Journal of Modern History 47 (1975): 601–28;CrossRefGoogle ScholarKearney, Hugh, The British Isles: A History of Four Nations, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 2006).Google Scholar

5. Hutchison, Scottish Politics, 176–78.

6. For more on “Red Clydeside,” see Duncan, Robert and McIvor, Arthur, eds., Militant Workers: Labour and Class Conflict on the Clyde, 1900–1950 (Edinburgh, 1992).Google Scholar

7. Turner, A. C., Scottish Home Rule (Oxford, 1952)Google Scholar; Hanham, H. J., Scottish Nationalism (London, 1969).Google Scholar

8. Harvie, Christopher, Scotland and Nationalism: Scottish Society and Politics 1707 to the Present, 3rd ed. (London, 1998).Google Scholar

9. See also, for the later twentieth century, Mitchell, James, Conservatives and the Union: A Study of Conservative Party Attitudes to Scotland (Edinburgh, 1990).Google Scholar

10. Extremely little has been published on twentieth-century Welsh Conservatism, although there has recently been some pioneering work by Matthew Cragoe on the nineteenth-century Right. See his An Anglican Aristocracy: The Moral Economy of the Landed Estate in Carmarthenshire, 1832–1895 (Oxford, 1996).

11. For the distinctive left-wing politics of the heavily unionized South Wales coalfields, see Williams, Chris, Democratic Rhondda: Politics and Society, 1885–1951 (Cardiff, 1996).Google Scholar

12. See also Foster’s brilliant collection of essays, Paddy and Mr Punch: Connections in Irish and English History (London, 1993). Foster has since updated his treatment to the turn of the twenty-first century with Luck and the Irish: A Brief History of Change, 1970–2000 (London, 2007).

13. See also Lyons’s Oxford University Ford lectures, published as the prize-winning Culture and Anarchy in Ireland, 1890–1939 (Oxford, 1979).

14. Jackson, Home Rule, 200.

15. Recently updated as Northern Ireland, 1921–2001: Political Forces and Social Classes (London, 2002).

16. See, for example, Hennessey, Thomas, A History of Northern Ireland, 1920–1996 (Dublin, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the discussion in Henry Patterson’s excellent Ireland Since 1939: The Persistence of Conflict (Dublin, 2006).

17. See also Tanner, Debating Nationhood.

18. Robbins, Bibliography, 14, 18–19.

19. Peter Hennessy’s “insider” perspectives on the workings of the governmental machine are also useful for the post-1945 period, but his approach is sometimes a little too anecdotal and journalistic. See Hennessey, Peter, The Cabinet (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar, his massive Whitehall, rev. ed. (London, 2001), and also The Prime Minister: The Office and Its Holders Since 1945 (London, 2001).

20. In the 1998 local elections in England, turnout was 28.8 percent: Turnout at Local Elections (London, 2002), 3.

21. Lee, J. M., Social Leaders and Public Persons: A Study of County Government in Cheshire Since 1888 (Oxford, 1963)Google Scholar; Jones, G. W., Borough Politics: A Study of Wolverhampton Town Council, 1888–1964 (London, 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Young, Ken, Local Politics and the Rise of Party: The London Municipal Society and the Conservative Intervention in Local Elections, 1894–1963 (Leicester, 1975).Google Scholar

22. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Matthew, H. C. G. and Harrison, Brian (Oxford, 2004)Google Scholar; online edition, ed. Lawrence Goldman, http://www.oxforddnb.com.

23. Notable volumes include Bentley, Michael, Lord Salisbury’s World: Conservative Environments in Late-Victorian Britain (Cambridge, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Adams, R. J. Q, Balfour: The Last Grandee (London, 2007)Google Scholar; Wilson, John, CB: A Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (London, 1973)Google Scholar; Grigg, John, The Young Lloyd George (London, 1973)Google Scholar; Grigg, , Lloyd George: The People’s Champion, 1902–1911 (London, 1978)Google Scholar; Grigg, , Lloyd George: From Peace to War, 1912–1916 (London, 1985)Google Scholar; Grigg, , Lloyd George: War Leader, 1916–1918 (London, 2002)Google Scholar; Blake, Robert, The Unknown Prime Minister: The Life and Times of Andrew Bonar Law, 1858–1923 (London, 1955)Google Scholar; Marquand, David, Ramsay Macdonald (London, 1977)Google Scholar; Williamson, Philip, Baldwin: Conservative Leadership and National Values (Cambridge, 1999)Google Scholar; Dilks, David, Neville Chamberlain, vol. I: Pioneering and Reform, 1869–1929 (Cambridge, 1984)Google Scholar; Gilbert, Martin, Churchill: A Life (London, 1991)Google Scholar; Dutton, David, Anthony Eden: A Life and Reputation (London, 1997)Google Scholar; Horne, Alistair, Macmillan, 2 vols. (London, 1988–89)Google Scholar; Pimlott, Ben, Harold Wilson (London, 1992)Google Scholar; Campbell, John, Edward Heath (London, 1993)Google Scholar; Campbell, , Margaret Thatcher, 2 vols. (London, 2000–3).Google Scholar

24. Later editions appeared as The Conservative Party from Peel to Thatcher (London, 1985) and The Conservative Party from Peel to Major (London, 1997).

25. Ramsden, John, The Age of Balfour and Baldwin (London, 1978)Google Scholar, The Age of Churchill and Eden, 1940–1957 (London, 1995)Google Scholar, and Winds of Change: Macmillan to Heath, 1957–1975 (London, 1996)Google Scholar.

26. Green, E. H. H., The Crisis of Conservatism: The Politics, Economics, and Ideology of the British Conservative Party, 1880–1914 (London, 1995)Google Scholar; Green, , Ideologies of Conservatism: Conservative Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century (Oxford, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Williamson, Baldwin.

27. Cf.Dangerfield, George, The Strange Death of Liberal England (London, 1936)Google Scholar.

28. See, for example, Clarke, Peter, Liberals and Social Democrats (Cambridge, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Freeden, Michael, The New Liberalism: An Ideology of Social Reform (Oxford, 1978)Google Scholar; Bernstein, G. L., Liberalism and Liberal Politics in Edwardian England (Boston, 1986).Google Scholar

29. Tanner, Political Change, 426.

30. Matthew, H. C. G. et al. , “The Franchise Factor in the Rise of the Labour Party,” English Historical Review 91 (1976): 723–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31. The seminal critique being Tanner, Duncan, “The Parliamentary Electoral System, the ‘Fourth Reform Act,’ and the Rise of Labour in England and Wales,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 134 (1983): 205–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32. See, for example, Laybourn, Keith, The Rise of Labour: The British Labour Party, 1890–1979 (London, 1988)Google Scholar, which argues that “the Labour party’s growth in the early twentieth century was inevitable given the social and economic issues of the time, that the association with the working class reached its high-point during the inter-war years but that the post-war years have necessitated that the Labour party meet the changing economic and social environment—and this is has failed to do” (5).

33. Tanner, Political Change; McKibbin, Ross, The Evolution of the Labour Party, 1910–1924 (Oxford, 1974).Google Scholar

34. Fielding, Steven, The Labour Party: Continuity and Change in the Making of New Labour (Basingstoke, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cronin, James E., New Labour’s Pasts: The Labour Party and Its Discontents (Harlow, 2004).Google Scholar

35. Pelling’s, HenryThe British Communist Party (London, 1958)Google Scholar is the classic work. For more recent studies, see Worley, Matthew, Class Against Class: The Communist Party in Britain Between the Wars (London, 2002)Google Scholar, and Thorpe, Andrew, The British Communist Party and Moscow, 1920–1943 (Manchester, 2000)Google Scholar. For interesting work on the patriotism of the British Left, see Ward, Paul, Red Flag and Union Jack: Englishness, Patriotism, and the British Left, 1881–1924 (Woodbridge, 1998).Google Scholar

36. Pugh, Martin, “Hurrah for the Blackshirts!”: Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars (London, 2005)Google Scholar; Stone, Dan, “The English Mistery, the BUF, and the Dilemmas of British Fascism,” Journal of Modern History 75 (2003): 336–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37. See, for example, the debate between Pugh and Jon Lawrence on the significance of fascist violence in the movement’s decline. Lawrence, Jon, “Fascist Violence and the Politics of Public Order in Inter-War Britain: The Olympia Debate Revisited,” Historical Research 76 (2003): 238–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pugh, Martin, “The National Government, the British Union of Fascists, and the Olympia Debate,” Historical Research 78 (2005): 253–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lawrence, Jon, “Why Olympia Mattered,” Historical Research 78 (2005): 263–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38. In 1969, a secret internal Conservative party report estimated that if women had not been given the vote, Labour would have been in power almost continuously since 1945: Maguire, G. E., Conservative Women: A History of Women and the Conservative Party, 1874–1997 (Basingstoke, 1998), 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The difficulties encountered by women activists in male-dominated Labour politics has been brought out well in Graves, P. M., Labour Women: Women in British Working-Class Politics, 1918–1939 (Cambridge, 1994).Google Scholar

39. Some indication of the potential for future research in this area is given by Jarvis, David, “The Conservative Party and the Politics of Gender, 1900–1939,” in The Conservatives and British Society, 1880–1990, ed. Francis, Martin and Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Ina (Cardiff, 1996), 172–93Google Scholar; Jarvis, , “‘Behind Every Great Party’: Women and Conservatism in Twentieth–Century Britain,” in Vickery, Amanda, ed., Women, Privilege, and Power, 289–314Google Scholar; Jarvis, , “‘Mrs. Maggs and Betty’: The Conservative Appeal to Women Voters in the 1920s,” Twentieth Century British History 5 (1994): 129–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40. Pugh, Martin, The March of the Women: A Revisionist Analysis of the Campaign for Women’s Suffrage, 1866–1914 (Oxford, 2000)Google Scholar. For a somewhat polemical and notably controversial treatment, see Bearman, C. J., “An Examination of Suffragette Violence,” English Historical Review 125 (2005): 365–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41. See, for example, Purvis, June, Emmeline Pankhurst: A Biography (London, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Purvis, June and Stanley Holton, Sandra, eds., Votes for Women (London, 2000).Google Scholar

42. Gullace, Nicoletta F., “The Blood of our Sons”: Men, Women, and the Renegotiation of British Citizenship During the Great War (New York, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43. Other notable recent examples include Grayzel, Susan R., Women’s Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France During the First World War (Chapel Hill, 1999)Google Scholar; Pedersen, Susan, Family, Dependence, and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britain and France, 1914–1945 (Cambridge, 1993)Google Scholar; Rose, Sonya O., Which People’s War? National Identity and Citizenship in Wartime Britain, 1939–1945 (Oxford, 2003)Google Scholar; Summerfield, Penny, Women Workers in the Second World War, 2nd ed. (London, 1989).Google Scholar

44. Jefferys, Kevin, The Churchill Coalition and Wartime Politics, 1940–1945 (Manchester, 1991)Google Scholar; Brooke, Stephen, Labour’s War: The Labour Party During the Second World War (Oxford, 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45. See, for example, Calder, Angus, The Myth of the Blitz (London, 1991)Google Scholar; Lowe, Rodney, “The Second World War, Consensus, and the Foundation of the Welfare State,” Twentieth Century British History 1 (1990): 152–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jefferys, Kevin, “British Politics and Social Policy During the Second World War,” Historical Journal 30 (1987): 123–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harris, Jose, “Political Values and the Debate on State Welfare, 1940–45,” in War and Social Change: British Society in the Second World War, ed. Smith, Harold L. (Manchester, 1986), 233–63.Google Scholar

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47. Kennedy, Paul, The Realities Behind Diplomacy: Background Influences on British External Policy, 1865–1980 (London, 1981).Google Scholar

48. Steiner, Zara, The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy, 1898–1914 (Cambridge, 1969)Google Scholar; Steiner, , Britain and the Origins of the First World War (London, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Parker, R. A. C., Chamberlain and Appeasement: British Policy and the Coming of the Second World War (Basingstoke, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Parker, , Churchill and Appeasement (London, 2000).Google Scholar

49. For a strident—probably too strident—defense of the “primacy of domestic policy,” see Wilson, Keith M., The Policy of the Entente: Essays on the Determinants of British Foreign Policy, 1904–1914 (Cambridge, 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50. Full details of the project are available at http://commonwealth.sas.ac.uk/british.htm#C.

51. See, for example, Thompson, Andrew S., Imperial Britain: The Empire in British Politics, c. 1880–1932 (Harlow, 2000)Google Scholar; Goldsworthy, David, Colonial Issues in British Politics, 1945–1961 (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar; Darwin, John, Britain and Decolonization (Basingstoke, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Darwin, , The End of the British Empire (Oxford, 1991).Google Scholar

52. See, for example, Murphy, Philip, Party Politics and Decolonization: The Conservative Party and British Colonial Policy in Tropical Africa, 1951–1964 (Oxford, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Howe, Stephen, Anticolonialism in British Politics: The Left and the End of Empire, 1918–1964 (Oxford, 1993).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53. Cain, P. J. and Hopkins, A. G., British Imperialism 1688–2000, 2nd ed. (Harlow, 2001).Google Scholar

54. Readman, Paul, “The Conservative Party, Patriotism, and British Politics: The Case of the General Election of 1900,” Journal of British Studies 40 (2001): 107–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

55. Although see Thompson, Andrew, The Empire Strikes Back? The Impact of Imperialism on Britain from the Mid–Nineteenth Century (Harlow, 2005)Google Scholar, which provides an excellent if inevitably rather general overview.

56. Craig, F. W. S., British Electoral Facts, 1832–1987, 5th ed. (Dartmouth, 1989)Google Scholar; Craig, , British Parliamentary Election Results, 1885–1918 (London, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Craig, , British Parliamentary Election Results, 1918–1949 (Glasgow, 1969)Google Scholar; Craig, , British Parliamentary Election Results, 1950–1970 (Chichester, 1971)Google Scholar; Craig, , British Parliamentary Election Results, 1974–1983 (Chichester, 1984).Google Scholar

57. It is now complemented by works such as Norris, Pippa, Electoral Change in Britain Since 1945 (Oxford, 1997)Google Scholar, which provides an accessible entrée into the study of postwar elections from a political science perspective.

58. Butler has authored or co-authored all the “Nuffield” studies of general elections since 1951. His first book was The British General Election of 1951 (London, 1952)Google Scholar; his latest is Butler, David E. and Kavanagh, Dennis, The British General Election of 2005 (London, 2005).Google Scholar

59. McCallum, R. B. and Readman, Alison, The British General Election of 1945 (Oxford, 1947).Google Scholar

60. Russell, A. K., Liberal Landslide: The General Election of 1906 (Newton Abbot, 1973)Google Scholar; Blewett, Neal, The Peers, the Parties, and the People: The General Elections of 1910 (London, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Turner, John, British Politics and the Great War (New Haven, 1991)Google Scholar; Cook, Chris, The Age of Alignment: Electoral Politics in Britain, 1922–1929 (London, 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thorpe, Andrew, The British General Election of 1931 (Oxford, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stannage, Tom, Baldwin Thwarts the Opposition: The British General Election of 1935 (London, 1980).Google Scholar

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62. As Michael Bentley has suggested, postmodern ideas have “begun to nibble at, sometimes bite on, the assumptions of working historians whose conscious activity may betray no shadow of interest in theoretical matters.” See Bentley, Michael, ed., Companion to Historiography, 2nd ed. (London, 2002), 489–90.Google Scholar

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64. See, for example, Lawrence, Jon, “Political History,” in Writing History: Theory and Practice, ed. Berger, Stefan et al. (London, 2003), 183–202Google Scholar; Pedersen, Susan, “What Is Political History Now?” in What Is History Now? ed. Cannadine, David (Basingstoke, 2002), 38Google Scholar; Readman, Paul, “Speeches,” in Reading Primary Sources, ed. Dobson, Miriam and Ziemann, Benjamin (London, 2009), 209–25Google Scholar. Cowling’s works include The Impact of Labour, 1920–1924: The Beginning of Modern British Politics (Cambridge, 1971) and The Impact of Hitler: British Politics and British Policy, 1933–1940 (London, 1975).

65. See, for example, Bentley, Michael, “Politics, Doctrine, and Thought,” in High and Low Politics in Modern Britain, ed. Bentley, Michael and Stevenson, John (Oxford, 1983)Google Scholar; Turner, British Politics and the Great War.

66. Williamson, Baldwin.

67. Jones, Andrew, “Word and Deed: Why a Post-Poststructuralist History Is Needed, and How It Might Look,” Historical Journal 43 (2000): 517–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 528; Mandler, Peter, “The Problem with Cultural History,” Cultural and Social History 1 (2004): 94–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

68. For perceptive comments on this point, see Formisano, Ronald P., “The Concept of Political Culture,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 31 (2001): esp. 395–96, 418–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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