From Belloc to Churchill : Private Scholars, Public Culture, and the Crisis of British Liberalism, 1900-1939

This volume examines the changing role of national histories written in early 20th-century Britain by amateur scholars Hilaire Belloc, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, J.L. and Barbara Hammond, G.M. Trevelyan, and Winston Churchill.

Linking historiography and political history, Victor Feske addresses the changing role of national histories written in early 20th-century Britain by amateur scholars Hilaire Belloc, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, J.L. and Barbara Hammond, G.M. Trevelyan, and Winston Churchill. These writers recast the 19th-century interpretation of British history at a time when both the nature of historical writing and the fortunes of Liberalism had begun to change. Before 1900, amateur historians writing for a wide public readership portrayed British history as a grand story of progress achieved through constitutional development. This ""Whig"" interpretation had become the cornerstone of Liberal party politics. But the decline of Liberalism as a political force after the turn of the century, coupled with the rise of professional history written by academics and based on archival research, inspired change among a new generation of Liberal historians. The result was a refashioned Whig historiography, stripped of overt connections to contemporary political Liberalism, that attempted to preserve the general outlines of the traditional Whiggist narrative within the context of a broad history of consensus. This new formulation, says Feske, was more suited to the intellectual and political climate of the 20th century.