SOURCE: A review of Twentieth-Century Britain, in History, Vol. 81, No. 263, July, 1996, pp. 492–93.

In the following review, Thorpe offers a positive assessment of Twentieth-Century Britain.

As we approach the end of the twentieth century, it is becoming increasingly feasible for history departments in higher education establishments to offer survey courses concentrating exclusively on the period since 1900. The literature is rich, and interest among potential students is high. Yet one of the problems with teaching such a course, until recently, has been the lack of good surveys. This gap is now being filled, but, even so, there was still a gap in the market for a book which moved away from the traditional ‘textbook’ format, heavy on politics and ‘events', and towards the broader conceptual questions of society, economics and culture without which any course on twentieth-century Britain would be, to some extent, just ‘one damned thing after another’. This...