From Restoration to Reform

Oct 20, 2024 5:52 PM

Author:Jonathan Clark

‘It is hard to write the history of the British Isles in these years as anything other than a success story.’

In reality, nothing about these successes was preordained.

In the mid seventeenth century the British Isles were marginal to Europe. A warring group of islands, frequently the scene of catastrophe, they counted for less than the sum of their parts. Yet, by 1832, the reverse was true. United politically as never before, these isles thrived when their European neighbours were torn by war and revolution.

Recovering from the turmoil of the Civil Wars, these four countries surmounted successive domestic and foreign challenges. They prospered and extended their power throughout the world. This long eighteenth century, so often seen as a prosaic, polite era, must instead be understood as one of dynamic and perilous conflict.

Tracing the political, religious and material cultures of the period, as well as what might have been, Jonathan Clark argues that the set of problems this period poses is of vital importance to the present.

Reviews

This is a masterful study which takes regional diversity very seriously

—— Catholic Herald

Charming and perceptive romp through the ration books... Much of the book's fun is in the deft way Nicol weaves together examples of can-do thrifty propaganda. She has trawled the Imperial War Museum and the National Archives and come up with some gems

—— Bee Wilson , Sunday Times

Fascinating slice of social history... With painstaking research, a good helping of north-east commonsense and glorious illustrations taken from Ministry of Information posters from the 1930s and '40s, she demonstrates how this generation could learn a lot from the self-sacrifice and austerity of the war years

—— Aberdeen Press and Journal

A fascinating book

—— Big Issue

A comparative history of rationing, 'making do' and the environmentally-friendly lessons we can learn from those post-war years

—— Choice Magazine

In our age of unprecedented consumption and limited resources, our grannies can show us the way to a total lifestyle change

—— Irish Examiner

Illustrated throughout with jaunty, witty government posters... Nicol wants our latter-day green movement to look back and learn a thing or two from forgotten habits of the past'

—— Mary Blanche Ridge , The Tablet

Good old granny! Here's what she could teach today's throw-away society with its gas-guzzlers, bulging wardrobes and waistlines... When it comes to going green, our wartime grannies showed us the way

—— Unite

Get a copy...and find out what your war-time granny can teach you about going green

—— Irish Times

Charming and perceptive romp through the ration books... It is apparent that Nicol, whose words exude practical optimism, would have made a good Land Girl.

—— The Sunday Times

Illustrated throughout with jaunty, witty, government posters... Nicol wants our latter-day green movement to look back and learn a thing or two from forgotten habits of the past

—— The Tablet

Rich

—— Christopher Hirst , Independent

This is a scholarly, readable and wonderfully eccentric homage to India as seen through foreign eyes

—— Good Book Guide

Spellbinding

—— Escape

Hitler's Furies is the first book to follow the biographical trajectories of individual women whose youthful exuberance, loyalty to the Führer, ambition, and racism took them to the deadliest sites in German-occupied Europe. Drawing on immensely rich source material, Wendy Lower integrates women perpetrators and accomplices into the social history of the Third Reich, and illuminates them indelibly as a part of post-war East and West German memory that has been, until this book, unmined

—— Claudia Koonz, author of Mothers in the Fatherland

Stomach-churning

—— Illtyd Harrington , West End Extra

Compelling... Lower's careful research proves that the capacity for indifferent cruelty is not reserved for men – it exists in all of us

—— Renae Merle , Washington Post

Lower’s impressive analysis is a painful but transfixing read

—— Christopher Hirst , Independent

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