Book Review: Sally Wainwright GortonKristynJohnsonBeth (2025). Sally Wainwright. Manchester University Press. 220pp. ISBN 9781526142870.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: What Should Historians Do with Heroes?: Reflections on Nineteenth‐ and Twentieth‐Century Britain

Book reviews

Book reviews

Where to now?The Cultural Turn and the Manchester University Press Studies in Imperialism Series Stephen Heathorn Visions of Empire: Patriotism, popular culture and the city, 1870–1939 By Brad Beaven. Studies in Imperialism series. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012. Curating Empire: Museums and the British imperial experience Edited by Sarah Longair and John McAleer. Studies in Imperialism series. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012. Exporting Empire: Africa, colonial officials and the construction of the imperial state, c. 1900–1939 By Christopher Prior. Studies in Imperialism series. Manchester University Press, 2013. Heroic Imperialists in Africa: The promotion of British and French colonial histories, 1870–1939 By Berny Sèbe. Studies in Imperialism series. Manchester University Press, 2013. Writing Imperial Histories By Andrew S. Thompson. Studies in Imperialism series. Manchester University Press, 2013. In late 2012 the Manchester University Press Studies in Imperialism series (hereafter, the MUP series) published its 100th volume, and its founder, John M. MacKenzie, passed the general editorship of the series on to Andrew S. Thompson, to take effect in 2014. In marking this milestone, Thompson edited a volume of essays on the contribution of the MUP series, entitled Writing Imperial Histories, which was published in 2013. The MUP series has been closely associated with the emergence of the so-called “new imperial history” of Britain, which is neither a singular approach nor a definable school, and moreover should not be confused with recent overt apologists of the British Empire like Niall Ferguson.1 Rather it refers to those who have championed putting a critical view of empire at the centre of British historiography, with some taking highly theorized position influenced by postcolonial and feminist approaches—Antoinette Burton and Catherine Hall, although quite different in their methodology, come to mind2—while others seek to demonstrate the significance of empire through extensive empirical analysis. It is this latter approach that has been more predominant in the MUP series, which although not adverse to theory, has tended to promote empirical research into questions about the historical breadth and depth of British cultural entanglement in their empire. Given its recent publishing milestones, it seems appropriate to review some of the more recent volumes in the MUP series in light of the claims for the continuing significance and relevance of the series made by Thompson and the other contributors in the retrospective Writing Imperial Histories volume. As remarked by Thompson and others in Writing Imperial Histories, in current historiography, and indeed in much historical popular culture, “seeing” the influence of empire on domestic British developments has become an almost commonplace position. Barely twenty years ago, however, this was not the case and the MUP series is one, but not the only, body of scholarship that brought imperial issues into a more central position within British historiography. The broader context to this historiographical change was rooted in the seemingly paradoxical place of the empire in Britain after decolonization. As has been pointed out by critics of the new historiography, except for periods of overt crisis and military action—such as the Mau Mau in early 1950s Kenya, Suez in 1956, and UDI in Rhodesia in 1965—the period of decolonization did not throw up major domestic upheaval in Britain as it did in other European empires such as France and Portugal. Outside of Whitehall, the last gasps of empire and decolonization seemingly registered little in public consciousness, and from the 1970s onwards, at least outside of the realm of sport, when the British public thought about overseas (if at all) it was more likely to think of Britain’s relationship with the new Europe rather than with the old empire. In fact, as Thompson summarizes in his introduction to Writing Imperial Histories, in the first half of the twentieth century, the British public saw their empire as embodying the ideas of Western civilization; in the second half, it was thought by many to have been an atavistic obstacle, a relic that impeded rather than advanced social and economic progress. Historiographical interest in the British Empire correspondingly waned to the point of atrophy by the 1970s, with the (sometimes fallacious) assumption made that the remaining imperial historians tended to be those with...

Reviews: Twilight of the Literary: Figures of Thought in the Age of Print, the History and Narrative Reader, Mapping Lives: The Uses of Biography, Textual Histories: Readings in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Tools of Literacy: The Role of Skaldic Verse in Icelandic Textual Culture of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Curiosities and Texts: The Culture of Collecting in Early Modern England,

Reviews of Phyllis Lassner, 'British Women Writers of World War Two' and Heather Ingham, 'Women's Fiction Between the Wars'.

‘The conviviality of the narrative premise’ is Steven Earnshaw’s felicitous phrase for the theme that suffuses this book. It is ‘a crawl through the drinking places of English literary history,’ in the company of Chaucer, Langland, Shakespeare, Dekker, Jonson, Pepys, Ned Ward (author of The London Spy), Goldsmith, Gray, Fielding, Cowper, Crabbe, Dickens, Eliot (G.), Hardy, Eliot (T. S.), Coppard, Hampson, Hamilton, Orwell and Amis (M.). It also ‘attempts to weave a pattern out of the strands of “pub”, English literature and England’. It is a labour of love, the product of years of hoarded references and inspired cups and we must be grateful. It will become a standard resort for literary scholars seeking quotable material on pubs (Piers Plowman ‘pissed a pottel in a pater-noster while’), and for anyone who likes to savour ‘the pub moment’ through the medium of print.

Book reviews

Cyrenaican Expedition of the University of Manchester, 1952. Ed. by Alan Rowe, with contributions by Derek Buttle and John Gray. 9¾ × 7¼. Pp. xii+59+pls. 6. Manchester University Press, 1956. 25s. - Cyrenaican Expedition of the University of Manchester, 1955–7. Ed. by Alan Rowe, with contribution by John F. Healy. 11 × 8½. Pp. xiv+34+pls. 42. Manchester University Press, 1960. 42s. - Volume 41 Issue 1-2

Reviews: History and Memory, Historiography: An Introduction, Theories of Reading: Books, Bodies, and Bibliomania, Biography, a Brief History, Shakespeare and the Rise of the Editor., Brave Community. The Digger Movement in the English Revolution, Bloody Romanticism: Spectacular Violence and the Politics of Representation, 1776–1832, the Feminization of Fame 1750–1850, the Collected Letters of Harriet Martineau, Master and Servant. Love and

Reviews: Historians, Reflections on the Marxist Theory of History, Political Culture in Later Medieval England, Writing under Tyranny: English Literature and the Henrician Reformation., the Subject of Elizabeth: Authority, Gender, and Representation, ‘No historie So meete’: Gentry Culture and the Development of Local History in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England., the Spanish Match. Prince Charles's Journey to Madrid, 1623, the

N. J. Higham. The English Conquest: Gildas and Britain in the Fifth Century. New York: Manchester University Press. 1994. Pp. viii, 220. Cloth $69.95, paper $29.95 and N. J. Higham. An English Empire: Bede and the Early Anglo-Saxon Kings. New York: Manchester University Press. 1995. Pp. viii, 269. Cloth $69.95, paper $19.95 Higham N. J.. The English Conquest: Gildas and Britain in the Fifth Century. New York: Manchester University Press. 1994. Pp. viii, 220. Cloth $69.95, paper $29.95. Higham N. J.. An English Empire: Bede and the Early Anglo-Saxon Kings. New York: Manchester University Press. 1995. Pp. viii, 269. Cloth $69.95, paper $19.95. Michael E. Jones Michael E. Jones Bates College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 103, Issue 5, December 1998, Pages 1568–1569, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/103.5.1568 Published: 01 December 1998

Book reviews

Journal Article Guide to English Commercial Statistics, 1696–1782. By G. N. Clark, University of Oxford. With a Catalogue of Materials by Barbara M. Franks. (London: Royal Historical Society. 1938. Pp. xvi, 211.) and The English Coasting Trade, 1600–1750. By T. S. Willan, University of Manchester. (Manchester: Manchester University Press. 1938. Pp. xiv, 233. 10s. 6d.) Get access Guide to English Commercial Statistics, 1696–1782. By Clark G. N., University of Oxford. With a Catalogue of Materials by Barbara M. Franks. (London: Royal Historical Society. 1938. Pp. xvi, 211.)The English Coasting Trade, 1600–1750. By Willan T. S., University of Manchester. (Manchester: Manchester University Press. 1938. Pp. xiv, 233. 10s. 6d.) Elizabeth Hoon Cawley Elizabeth Hoon Cawley Princeton, New Jersey Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 45, Issue 1, October 1939, Pages 127–128, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/45.1.127 Published: 01 October 1939

Jurisprudence. By B. A. Wortley, O.B.E., LL.M., LL.D. Professor of Jurisprudence and International Law in the University of Manchester. [Manchester: Manchester University Press; New York: Oceana Publications Inc.1967. xxi (Tables of Contents and Cases), 456 and 16 (Appendices and Index) pp. £3 3s. ($9).] - Volume 16 Issue 4