Revel, Riot and Rebellion Revisited

Abstract

This essay revisits the fourth of David Underdown’s seven books and places it into its historical and historiographical context. It seeks to demonstrate how the book represents a major turning point in his intellectual development and offers, with the wisdom of hindsight, a highly positive account of its ambition and achievement. It then seeks to explain why the books received a much less enthusiastic set of reviews than earlier and later books. It is, the essay concludes, a book that was either published too early or too late.