Valuable second opinions

Professor Roger Louis’s own expertise is in British imperial history; he edited the three-volume Oxford History of the British Empire. For years past, he has run seminars at the Harry Ransome Humanities Research Center at Austin, Texas, which holds ample stores of British literary and historical manuscripts; he invites leading dons and critics from Great Britain to discuss their current work, and has secured some unusually fine papers. This is his third collection of their essays; it covers many aspects of the history of this country during the 20th century.

Old-fashioned, party-centred, parliamentary history hardly appears. David Butler gives an account of how studies of general elections have developed, and produces the origin of the word psephology: coined by Frank Hardie at Pembroke high table in Oxford for R. B. McCallum, the author of the first of the Nuffield studies that Butler has carried on. Great men do not make much of a showing, either; though Peter Marsh discusses acutely the impact of Joseph Chamberlain’s business career on his political insights, and Kenneth Morgan looks at the young Lloyd George as a pro-Boer, coupling him in that role with the staider Keir Hardie.