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Amazon.co.uk Review
Nowhere does the idea of class seem quite so powerful as in Britain, writes London University historian David Cannadine in this engrossing study. Although his fellow historians have largely abandoned class analysis in their work, social distinctions and divisions persist and remain powerful. That historians (notably among them the Marxist scholars E P Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm) and politicians now prefer to disregard those distinctions, Cannadine believes, is the result of "the shift from the traditional preoccupation with people as collective producers to the alternative notion of people as individual consumers"--the triumph, in other words, of market capitalism. Yet, Cannadine continues, it is through the lens of class that Britons "understand and describe their social worlds" and not through other idealised models.
Cannadine examines the work of scholars and political thinkers who have attempted to alter that view, among them Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin, whose "main concern was to change the way the British looked and felt and thought about their society and themselves." However well intentioned, such efforts are doomed to failure, Cannadine argues, and although Tories and Labourites promise a classless society to come, the British view will likely remain class-bound. --Gregory McNamee
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Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
One minor niggle which I have with this, as with many modern works of history, is how the professorial writer is so intent on addressing his fellow professors that the style becomes inbred and almost narcissistic. You feel like protesting what about the real world and the ordinary reader.
His itroduction is well presented and interesting however as I moved further in to the book, it became a struggle at times to keep focused upon each chapter.
The problem is simple: he has over-researched this subject. The result is a quagmire of references and sojourns in to sub class related fields which only serve to confuse the reader and frustrate the flow of reading.
His sub chapter headings are not clear (in the respect that they did not focus specifically upon any one area). I found myself getting lost.
However, this is a collegic and worth while book to have on your shelf, he covers writers from Marx and Thatcher to Dickens Orwell and Eliot.
If your looking for a book that looks at class in it's historical perspective, this is your first choice. If like myself you want a more focused view upon the fundamentals of class, choose another. A very good book, but it is too jumbled and the chapters are not content specific, at times it reads more like a PHd thesis, quotes infinitim.Professor Keitch LL.D
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