STRANGE SURVIVAL OF LIBERAL BRITAIN

In this wide-ranging and sometimes controversial study, one of our pre-eminent political historians dispels the popular myths that have grown up about this critical period in Britain's story, and argues that it set the scene for much that is laudable about our nation today. He looks at how Britain has been governed, the franchise and electoral system, the House of Lords and the House of Commons, the monarchy, the Cabinet, local government, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, the Empire. He looks at the politics of unionism and the 1895 General Election, at Lord Salisbury's foreign policy and challenges from America, the Middle and Far East. He looks at the war in South Africa and the challenge from the Boers, confident unionism, the Labour Party representing the working class and the trade unions. He does not shy away from the concentration camps in South Africa, Lord Rosebery's return. There was the problem the end of the Victorian Age of reforming education leading into new alignments and the alliance with Japan, the Irish Land Act and devolution, the Corn Duty and its repeal, Home Rule, the 1906 General Election, school meals and medical inspection, old age pensions, the reform of taxation, Churchill and social reform, the constitutional crisis and the end of Balfour's leadership, land reform, female suffrage, and from the entente with France and two world wars. The turbulent years of 1895 to 1914 changed Britain's political landscape for ever. They saw a transition from aristocratic rule to mass politics and heralded a new agenda which still dominates today. Economic modernisation, social welfare and equality, secondary and technical education, a new role for Britain in the world were all complex and difficult issues of the period which proved so thorny that despite the efforts of the Edwardians, they remain among the most pressing problems facing us in the 21st century. Vernon Bogdanor believes that the robustness of Britain's parliamentary and political institutions and her liberal political culture, with the commitment to rational debate and argument, were powerful enough to carry her through one of the most trying periods of her history, and so make possible the remarkable survival of liberal Britain. A thumping 3" thick tome of 880 pages with superb timeline of main events and seven maps in 2022 first edition.