Synopses & Reviews
This book brings together the interpretations of outstanding writers on the literature, politics, and history of modern Britain. It deals with a rich variety of themes, some familiar, many unexpected, taking the reader on a highly engaging excursion through British life and intellectual biography. Its scope covers not only the personalities, politics, and culture of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, but also the interaction of British society with other societies throughout the world.
Review
"Roger Louis has assembled the work of an impressive roster of luminaries in this volume..."--Chris Waters, The Historian
"...Not for the first time, the importance of American scholarship for British history has been impressively demonstrated."--Donald Cameron Watt, Times Literary Supplement
About the Author
Wm. Roger Louis is Kerr Professor of English History and Cultures, University of Texas, Austin and Fellow of St Antonys College, Oxford.
Table of Contents
Pompous and Circumstantial Elgar and Empire * Joseph Chamberlain: Entrepreneur in Politics * Lloyd George, Keir Hardie and the Importance of the "Pro-Boers" * Jan Smuts, Race and the South African War * Siegfried Sassoon's War * Keynes and Bloomsbury * An Economist's View of Myth in Bloomsbury * Women's Stake in Democracy: Eleanor Rathbone's Answer to Virginia Woolf * Harold Nicolson: A Curious and Colorful Life * Is Political Biography an Art? * "What are we to make of Isaiah Berlin?" * The Projection of Britain in America before the Second World War * Thucydides Among the Mandarins: Sir Keith Hancock and the Second World War Civil Histories * Britain and the Making of the United Nations * British Psephology 1945-2001 * To Suez with Tears * The Battle for African History * Going Native: Missionaries in India * When Caliban Crossed the Atlantic * David Irving and the Holocaust Denial * Britain: A Return to the Eighteenth Century