Yet More Adventures with Britannia

Personalities, Politics and Culture in Britain

Bibliographic Data

ID9797188
AuthorsMirjam M Foot (corresponding author), M Foot
Year2006
Volume121
Issue493
Pages1190-1191
Publication date2006-09-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe English Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-8266 • E-ISSN: 1477-4534
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ehr/cel275
OpenAlexW1968317348
LanguageEN
Citations received7

For thirty years past, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin has sustained lectures on aspects of British history and literature, now under the genial chairmanship of Professor William Roger Louis, historian of the British empire, who has edited several volumes of the proceedings. This fourth volume, Yet more Adventures with Britannia, offers twenty-one articles, all original, some of them startling. A still topical opening article by Bernard Porter on the admission of terrorists to Great Britain between 1850 and 1914 discusses the doctrine of asylum, and the contempt for foreigners that it showed beside liberal principle. Liberal principle gets another sharp look from Antony Best, as he looks over right-wing and left-wing attitudes to the conflict between Japan and China in the 1930s. Ferdinand Mount discusses Anthony Powell, who was his uncle, and finds A Dance to the Music of Time an admirable guide to twentieth-century Britain. There are perceptive essays on Waugh and Larkin, and S.J.D. Green attributes the decline of the puritan ethic to the impact of rationing, and so to dealings in black markets, in both World Wars. Anne Chisholm's talk on ‘Frances Partridge: the last of the Bloomsberries’ reveals that much of the hard work for Strachey and Fulford's splendid edition of the Greville Memoirs was done for Strachey by Ralph and Frances Partridge, with whom he shared a house; but never acknowledged by Fulford, who took the edition over after Strachey died. (Of that edition, in eight volumes in 1938, Macmillan only printed 600 copies for sale, so that it has become a rare book instead of the familiar text it should be.) Niall Ferguson re-examines the origins of the Great War of 1914, from an unexpected angle: that of the holders of government bonds, and comes to an unexpected conclusion—they were thoroughly surprised, in the teeth of all the talk by diplomatic historians of a long-expected world struggle. Avi Shlaim re-examines the Balfour Declaration, and agrees with Elizabeth Monroe that, ‘Measured by British interests alone, it is one of the greatest mistakes in our imperial history’. Brian Bond wrestles with the myth of Oh! What a lovely war. Alex Danchev indicates how badly Arthur Bryant mishandled the diaries of Lord Alanbrooke, and Richard Drayton gives an account of capitalist-imperialist skulduggery in British Guiana which disgraces both the British and the United States governments—in the 1950s. He ties this in with much more recent events, concluding that ‘It is certainly time for British and American policy-makers to take stock of their capacity for evil’. This valuable miscellany concludes with a list of all the essays read since 1975

Adventure · Ancient history · Art history · Contempt · Memoir · Mutiny · Political science · Politics · Australian History and Society · Classics · History · Law

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