Product Description

David Cannadine's unique history examines the British preoccupation with class and the different ways the British have thought about their own society. From the eighteenth through the twentieth century, he traces the different ways British society has been viewed, unveiling the different purposes each model has served. This is a social, intellectual and political history and a powerful account of how and why class has shaped British identity.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #48254 in Books
• Published on: 2000-03-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
"Class," the grocer's daughter Margaret Thatcher once remarked, "is a Communist concept. It groups people as bundles and sets them against one another." The notion of social and economic classes has certainly been a durable one, and it has proven useful to not only Communist theoreticians but also historians and social scientists of all stripes.

Nowhere does the idea of class seem quite so powerful as in Britain, writes London University historian David Cannadine in this engrossing study. Although his fellow historians have largely abandoned class analysis in their work, social distinctions and divisions persist and remain powerful. That historians (notably among them the Marxist scholars E P Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm) and politicians now prefer to disregard those distinctions, Cannadine believes, is the result of "the shift from the traditional preoccupation with people as collective producers to the alternative notion of people as individual consumers"--the triumph, in other words, of market capitalism. Yet, Cannadine continues, it is through the lens of class that Britons "understand and describe their social worlds" and not through other idealised models.

Cannadine examines the work of scholars and political thinkers who have attempted to alter that view, among them Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin, whose "main concern was to change the way the British looked and felt and thought about their society and themselves." However well intentioned, such efforts are doomed to failure, Cannadine argues, and although Tories and Labourites promise a classless society to come, the British view will likely remain class-bound. --Gregory McNamee

About the Author
David Cannadine is Professor of History and director of the Institute of Historical Research at London University. He is the author of several books including THE PLEASURES OF THE PAST, THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE BRITISH ARISTROCRACY and HISTORY IN OUR TIME.

Customer Reviews

A little muddled but worthy of a read
David cannadine has obviously researched this subject in minute detail adopting a looking glass aproach to a complex and highly subjective subject matter.

His itroduction is well presented and interesting however as I moved further in to the book, it became a struggle at times to keep focused upon each chapter.

The problem is simple: he has over-researched this subject. The result is a quagmire of references and sojourns in to sub class related fields which only serve to confuse the reader and frustrate the flow of reading.

His sub chapter headings are not clear (in the respect that they did not focus specifically upon any one area). I found myself getting lost.

However, this is a collegic and worth while book to have on your shelf, he covers writers from Marx and Thatcher to Dickens Orwell and Eliot.

If your looking for a book that looks at class in it's historical perspective, this is your first choice. If like myself you want a more focused view upon the fundamentals of class, choose another. A very good book, but it is too jumbled and the chapters are not content specific, at times it reads more like a PHd thesis, quotes infinitim.Professor Keitch LL.D