This book is an innovative appraisal of the nature of Edwardian Liberalism and the work of the 1905-15 Liberal governments. Rather than concentrating on debates about the "decline of Liberalism," it makes extensive use of new archival research in order to identify the major concerns of Liberals in the first two decades of the twentieth century and how policy-making was related to conflicting definitions of Liberal ideology. The book covers all the key areas of domestic and foreign policy and concludes with a section on the Asquith government and World War I.

In the late nineteenth century Britain was one of the most urbanised societies in the world, yet land reform remained an important element in its politics. This book explores this paradox through an examination of the Liberal Party's increasing interest in the English dimension of the land question. Most historians have dismissed this phenomenon as a product of romantic views about the English countryside and Liberalism's failure to engage with the problems of urban society. In contrast, the author argues that English land reform was important to Liberals because it both expressed their...