One of the major intellectual debates at the beginning of the new century concerns the status of accounts of the past. Do historians discover or invent, construct or reconstruct the objects they study? The discussion has been particularly lively in France and in the USA, and it is therefore appropriate that a group of distinguished historians from Britain should now engage with this subject. These ten essays present a historical and critical overview of British historical thought and writing since 1900, focusing on selected periods, regions, disciplines, and themes. This challenging volume...

The essays in this volume give an account of how the agenda for theology and religious studies was set and reset throughout the twentieth century - by rapid and at times cataclysmic changes (wars, followed by social and academic upheavals in the 1960s), by new movements of thought, by a bounty of archaeological discoveries, and by unprecedented archival research. Further new trends of study and fresh approaches (existentialist, Marxian, postmodern) have in more recent years generated new quests and horizons for reflection and research. The centenary of the British Academy in 2002 has provided...

These essays not only describe the major changes in British society in recent years, but seek to understand and explain what is happening. They consider the wide variety of mechanisms that underlie these changes, in particular processes of social interaction. The ill-understood nature of these mechanisms may be a major reason why so much social reform has proved ineffective. By highlighting the complexities of the causal mechanisms, sociological research can make a major contribution to policy and public debate. While these papers do not claim that sociology will provide all the answers, they...

This is the first scholarly survey of the British constitution in the twentieth century. Indeed, it fills a very real gap in the history of Britain during the last hundred years. The book is a product of interdisciplinary collaboration by a distinguished group of constitutional lawyers, historians and political scientists, and draws where possible on primary sources. Its evaluation of the recent constitutional reforms will be of particular interest. This major interpretation of the constitution will remain authoritative for many years.

This intriguing collection of essays by contemporary classicists reveals new discoveries, new interpretations and new ways of exploring the experiences of the ancient world. Offering a wide variety of authorial style, the chapters range in subject matter from contemporary poets' exploitation of Greek and Latin authors, via newly discovered literary texts and art works, to modern arguments about ancient democracy and slavery, and close readings of the great poets and philosophers of antiquity.

This collection of essays explores the questions of what counted as knowledge in Victorian Britain, who defined knowledge and the knowledgeable, by what means and by what criteria.
The concept of knowledge is complex and much debated, with a multiplicity of meanings and troubling relationships. By studying the Victorian organization of knowledge in its institutional, social, and intellectual settings, these essays contribute to our consideration of these wider issues.

This is an authoritative guide to the complete range of medieval scholarship undertaken in twentieth-century Britain: history, archaeology, language, culture. Some of the twenty-nine essays focus on changes in research methods or on the achievements of individual scholars, while others are the personal account of a lifetime's work in a discipline. Many outline the ways in which subjects may develop in the twenty-first century.