Finding A Role?: The United Kingdom 1970-1990 Hardcover

Brian A. Harrison

In 1970 the 'cold war' was still cold, Northern Ireland's troubles were escalating, the UK's relations with the EEC were unclear, and corporatist approaches to the economy precariously persisted. By 1990 Communism was crumbling world-wide, Thatcher's economic revolution had occurred, terrorism in Northern Ireland was waning, 'multi-culturalism' was in place, family structures were changing fast, and British political institutions had become controversial. Seven analytic chapters pursue these changes and accumulate rich detail on changes in international relations, landscape and townscape, social framework, family and welfare structures, economic policies and realities, intellect and culture, politics and government. The concluding chapter ranges chronologically even more widely to bring out the interaction of past and present, then asks how far the UK had by 1990 identified its world role. Like Harrison's Seeking a Role: The United Kingdom 1951-1970 (2009) - the immediately preceding volume in this series - Finding a Role? includes a full chronological table and an ample index of names and themes. This, the first thorough, wide-ranging, and synoptic study of the UK so far published on this period, has two overriding aims: to show how British institutions evolved, but also to illuminate changes in the British people: their hopes and fears, values and enjoyments, failures and achievements. It therefore equips its readers to understand events since 1990, and so to decide for themselves where the UK should now be going.

9780199548750

English

Oxford University Press

19 Apr 2010

708

Brian Harrison, Emeritus Professor of Modern British History at Oxford, has published widely in British social, political and cultural history since the 1790s. His first book, Drink and the Victorians (1971, second edition 1994), was followed by books on British reforming movements, feminism, and anti-feminism, Oxford University's history, and - in The Transformation of British Politics 1860-1995 (1996) - on how our political institutions have evolved. After editing the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography from 2000 to 2004, Harrison was knighted in 2005 for 'services to scholarship'.

a major achievement of modern historical analysis * CHOICE * Lucidly written, meticulously researched, and comprehensive in scope, the book stands out as a work of rare depth and sophistication. It is a landmark attempt to come to terms with Britain's contemporary history... Harrison has written a formidable book, replete with significance and interest. Scholars and students of modern Britain will be returning to it again and again in the years to come, both as an unrivalled source of information and as an eloquent contribution to a historiographical debate that will run and run * Ben Jackson, English Historical Review * A sweeping assessment of British history... Comprehensive and thorough...the definitive starting point for any student or academic wishing to engage with this complex and fascinating period. * LIMINA: A Journal of Historical and Cultural Studies, on Seeking a Role and Finding a Role? * This is a great and virtuosic work, an essential book that enriches our understanding and never fails to reward its reader time and time again * Sean Moran, History, Reviews of New Books * These two magisterial volumes [Seeking a Role and Finding a Role?] ... offer a consistently stimulating and formidably well-informed analysis of then condition of England since 1950, as it was shaped both by the wider world and its own internal development. * Richard Whiting, History * Harrison's narrative is rich in both the range of the subjects he discusses and the detail in which they are analysed * John Callaghan, British Scholar * A brilliant work of modern history... [with] a range and depth, which should ensure that it... is regarded as a classic for years to come * Richard Weight, History Today * No historian is better equipped to tackle a study of modern Britain in its wondrous complexity than Harrison... Finding a role?... is a major achievement * Frank Prochaska, Times Literary Supplement * there is a hugely impressive breadth of reference and eye for detail on display here. * Lawrence Black, Journal of Modern History, on Seeking a Role and Finding a Role? *