MATTHEW MCCORMACK is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Northampton, UK. He is interested in the links between gender and political culture in British history, and his publications include his book The Independent Man: Citizenship and Gender Politics in Georgian England (2005).

'A vibrant collection revealing masculinity to be a vital and volatile variable in the formation of political identities and the public sphere. Matthew McCormack's commanding overview of the historiography of gender and politics tracks the vagaries of the 'Public Man' from the rough-and-ready world of Georgian elections to the celebrity culture of Blair's Britannia, pointing to important questions of chronology and interpretation for anyone interested in political culture and the history of masculinity.' - Helen Rogers, Liverpool John Moores University

• Introduction; M.McCormack Men, 'the Public' and Political History; M.McCormack Masculinity as Governance: Police, Public Service and the Embodiment of Authority, c. 1700-1850; F.Dodsworth The Father Governor: the British Administration of Aboriginal People in Port Jackson, 1788-92; S.Konishi 'A Gallant Nation': Chivalric Masculinity and Irish Nationalism in the 1790s; C.Kennedy Politics, Portraiture and Power: Reassessing the Public Image of William Ewart Gladstone; R.Clayton Windscheffel W. L. Jackson, Exemplary Manliness and Late-Victorian Popular Conservatism; M.Roberts 'Quit Ye Like Men': Platform Manliness and Electioneering, 1895-1939; K.Good The Bermondsey By-Election and Leftist Attitudes to Homosexuality; L.Robinson Conclusion: Chronologies in the History of British Political Masculinities, c. 1700-2000; M.McCormack & M.Roberts