Our noble cause
David Cannadine argues that their lordships have gained prestige just as the Commoners have lost it. After the general election of 1945, as after the "People's Budget" of 1909, there were those who...
David Cannadine argues that their lordships have gained prestige just as the Commoners have lost it. After the general election of 1945, as after the "People's Budget" of 1909, there were those who...
As John Major resumes normal life at No 10, Peter Hennessy helpfully shows how the function of premiership has changed since the 1940s. This is a very odd moment to be discussing the power of the...
Samuel Beer discerns the Americanisation of British politics and the decline of party government. Recently a British journalist recalled that Baroness Thatcher had once said that it would be a great...
Britain has changed profoundly in the 50 years since the end of the second world war. When the Institute of Contemporary British History was founded in 1986 by Peter Hennessy and myself, serious...
Noel Annan discusses the conflicting aims of the allied occupiers of Germany. When prime minister Attlee and foreign secretary Bevin returned to Potsdam after the general election in 1945, British...
W. G. Runciman claims that the real revolution in British society occurred after the first, not the second, world war. After the first world war, the hopes of the electorate for a new and better...
John Charmley argues that Britain failed to perceive the dangers in its 'special relationship' with the US. Between 1940 and 1957 successive British governments imagined that they could use American...
John Ramsden suggests that the postwar era in Britain really came to an end with the death of Churchill in January 1965. With the passage of time, "post-war" has become more or less synonymous with "...
Eric Roll lists the errors in Britain's postwar economic policy. First one cautionary remark: hindsight can show what should not have been done and what should have been done; but it does not...
John Campbell argues that academics should value the popular appeal of biography. Political biography, as a form of history, comes in for a lot of criticism these days. But serious questions are...
Ben Pimlott stands up for a derided bunch of individuals. A colleague recently told me a story that could have been meant to put me my place. He had been talking over the brandy at an international...
As the state swelled in the 1940s, political theory retreated into the shadows. Jose Harris explains why. A striking feature of political life in Britain from the mid-17th to the early 20th century...
Nicholas Timmins describes the ever-troubled history of the country's welfare state. "It is the same story . . . in every social service. there is greater demand. . . because the standards of the...
After years of debate on the academic year, pilot summer extension programmes are to begin in 1996. The Higher Education Funding Council for England agreed at a meeting this week to allot Pounds 9...
Non-mainstream economists are being marginalised by research assessment, a new survey of the subject in universities argues. The report, The Academic Labour Process and the Research Assessment...