Bedarida traces the evolution of English society from the height of the British Empire to the dawn of the single European market. French historiography is used to penetrate the attitudes and behaviour of the British people.

In this, the second edition of A Social History of England, Francois Bédarida has added a new final chapter on the last fifteen years. The book now traces the evolution of English society from the height of the British Empire to the dawn of the single European market. Making full use of the Annales school of French historiography, Bédarida takes his inquiry beyond conventional views to penetrate the attitudes, behaviour and psychology of the British people.

This, the third volume to appear in the New Oxford History of England, covers the period from the repeal of the Corn Laws to the dramatic failure of Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill. In his magisterial study of the mid-Victorian generation, Theodore Hoppen identifies three defining themes. The first he calls `established industrialism' - the growing acceptance that factory life and manufacturing had come to stay. It was during these four decades that the balance of employment shifted irrevocably. For the first time in history, more people were employed in industry than worked on the land. The second concerns the `multiple national identities' of the constituent parts of the United Kingdom. Dr Hoppen's study of the histories of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and the Empire reveals the existence of a variety of particular and overlapping national traditions flourishing alongside the increasingly influential structure of the unitary state. The third defining theme is that of `interlocking spheres' which the author uses to illuminate the formation of public culture in the period. This, he argues, was generated not by a series of influences operating independently from each other, but by a variety of intermeshed political, economic, scientific, literary and artistic developments. This original and authoritative book will define these pivotal forty years in British history for the next generation.

A pioneering study of the importance of dress to the collective and individual identities of the nineteenth-century English poor.

In the momentous period -- barely 30 years -- covered by this systematic reference/guide, the Edwardian world was transformed unrecognisably, through war, technological progress and social change, into the Nuclear Age. It saw the coming of mass democracy, the apogee of empire, the Depression, the threat of fascism, the development of suburban society, and, as yet scarcely understood, the end of Britain's international hegemony. Andrew Thorpe's superb contribution to the Companions series illuminates all this and much else. It will be indispensable to anyone interested in the history and politics of modern Britain.

In this insightful new study, Andrew August examines the British working class in the period when Britain became a mature industrial power, working men and women dominated massive new urban populations, and the extension of suffrage brought them into the political nation for the first time. Framing his subject chronologically, but treating it thematically, August gives a vivid account of working class life between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, examining the issues and concerns central to working-class identity. Identifying shared patterns of experience in the lives of workers, he avoids the limitations of both traditional historiography dominated by economic determinism and party politics, and the revisionism which too readily dismisses the importance of class in British society.

'Must be regarded as an important step in rescuing Edwardian history from what he rightly calls "an academic limbo" ... combines the qualities of readability, breadth of focus, willingness to explain.' - TES