Only Connect’

William C. Lubenow certainly knows his thinkers. Originally a historian of nineteenth-century government, he turned his attention to England’s intellectuals more than twenty years ago—and has never looked back. A series of well-received studies has been the result, including two books: The Cambridge Apostles, 1820–1914: Liberalism, Imagination, and Friendship in British Intellectual and Professional Life (1998; rev. ante, cxiv [1999], 1,354–5) and Liberal Intellectuals and Public Culture in Modern Britain, 1815–1914: Making Words Flesh (2010; rev. ante, cxxvii [2012], 466–8). This new volume can be seen as a companion piece to both. It develops themes about liberalism and friendship first articulated in his work on the Apostles, and substantially augments a chapter on ‘Clubs, societies, and new forms of binding friendship’ found in the second book. Its methodology is similar, too: drawing on a remarkable range of readings, from private papers and public pronouncements, to assemble, piece by piece, a picture of a whole milieu

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