At a time when the problems of the past have come to haunt many societies, the question of the social responsibility of the scientist and scholar, and of the historian in particular, has also once again become a topical one. In this volume seven internationally known historians consider this important question. DIOGENES LIBRARY

Francois Bedarida's elegant and persuasive essay on the main themes of British history since the mid-nineteenth century has been a popular text for students of the British Empire. In this edition of his widely-acclaimed work, Bedarida has added a substantial analysis of recent English history from 1975 to 1990. He takes a detached, perceptive, and quizzical view of the transformation of British society over the last fifteen years: a time which has witnessed a transformation of the British into a nation of go-getting, home-owning, share-owning entrepreneurs. While acknowledging that two-thirds of British society are better-off for the changes, Bedarida emphasizes the costs of development. He focuses on the British "under-class," the one-third of the population living below the poverty line and sliding irrevocably into squalor and oblivion. Critical, but not without hope, Bedarida finds -- in Britain's increasingly fragmented and individualistic society -- a collective conscience which continues to flicker.

In this, the second edition of A Social History of England, Francois Bedarida has added a new final chapter on the last fifteen years. The book now traces the evolution of English society from the height of the British Empire to the dawn of the single European market. Making full use of the Annales school of French historiography, Bedarida takes his inquiry beyond conventional views to penetrate the attitudes, behaviour and psychology of the British people.