English Pasts Essays in History and Culture [Paperback]

This is an accessible collection of essays by a leading historian and critic. Subjects include the idea of the national past, the historian as social critic, the claims of Cultural Studies, the nature of academic research, the function of the literary biography, and the lives and ideas of such figures as Charles Darwin, John Stuart Mill, Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, Bertrand Russell, R. H. Tawney, Isaiah Berlin, Raymond Williams, and Richard Hoggart.

Introduction
Part I: Histories
1. Writing `the National History': Trevelyan and After
2. French Contrasts: From the Panth?on to Poets' Corner
3. Idealizing England: ?lie Hal?vy and Lewis Namier
4. Speaking With Authority: The Historian as Social Critic
5. Victorian Values: from the Clapham Sect to the Clapham Omnibus
Part II: Minds
6. High Mind: John Stuart Mill
7. Literary Minds: Anthony Trollope and George Eliot
8. Young Minds: Charles Darwin and Bertrand Russell
9. Moral Mind: R. H. Tawney
10. Liberal Mind: Isaiah Berlin
11. Critical Minds: Raymond Williams and Richard Hoggart
Part III: Arguments
12. Against Prodspeak: `Research' in the Humanities
13. Grievance Studies: How not to do Cultural Criticism
14. Company Histories: CamU PLC and SocAnth Ltd
15. With Friends Like These: John Carey and Noel Annan
16. Before Another Tribunal : the Idea of the `Non-specialist Public'
Acknowledgements and References
Index

[T]he arguments are important, provoking, and driven along by an acerbic wit. it will be read with profit by scholars, students, and anyone else interested in the questions it raises....[I]t made me ponder and it made me laugh--out loud. --History