Described by A.G. Dickens in his introduction as, 'The Grandest historical work by any British author since Gibbon'. This history is fascinating not only for the turbulent time depicted but for Macaulay's ebullient style and the controversy that later surrounded it. A strident believer in progress and in Whig politics, critics condemmed the work for its whiggish interpretation of history. Recent scholarship, however, suggests that there is not so much a liberal bias, rather it merely reflects the age, as J.W. Burrows argued: 'If this was sectarian it was hardly, in any useful contemporary sense, polemically Whig; it is more like the sectarianism of English respectability.'
Did you find this review helpful?