John A. Taylor – författare

The public display of grief that accompanied the funeral of the late Princess of Wales drew attention to the many Britons who had found an affinity with Diana. Seeking an explanation for this affinity, Taylor argues that, during Diana's brief time in the world spotlight, Britain underwent a change in values and a shift in national identity from a system based almost exclusively on household and family values to one more accepting of individual autonomy and self-interest. Accustomed to royalty as symbols of national values and identity, persons of resentment (women, people of color, and homosexuals) found the divorced princess an apt symbol of their transvalued values. These groups declared ignoble the Queen, Prince Charles, and others who had previously been the patterns for nobility in British society, and they held up Diana as one truly noble.The British monarchy had come to symbolize household and family, but disaffected groups found themselves excluded from this model. While royal adultery and divorces were long characterized by a double standard, the Princess of Wales was able to win over considerable public sympathy to her plight. By the 1990s, British household size and structure had changed so dramatically that a challenge to a traditionally based family value system was well timed. Women, people of color, and homosexuals saw in Diana's life their own transformation in identity that now found greater acceptance in the larger society.

Will the British retain the monarchy and the English church establishment into the 21st century? The preservation of the monarchy and of the establishment of the church of England is a matter that cuts deep in fact and theory. The monarchy and the church are symbols of civil liberty, and as such they carry the freight of British national identity. Yet it is difficult to take those institutions seriously now because Britons give too little consideration to serious reforms of any kind for the monarchy or the church. This book suggests possible reforms.

Gregory King (1648-1712) was an engraver, herald, surveyor, and Secretary to the Commissioners for the Public Accounts, but he is best known for his 1696 estimates of the wealth and population of England. Writing in 1696, but calculating for the year 1688, he put the population at approximately 5.5 million. Historians have recently doubted the accuracy of these estimates. In this book, John A. Taylor argues that King was an honest compiler of statistics, and that his eccentric calculations based on the available 1696 data were motivated by the problems he faced. Because he used only empiricism and shop arithmetic, the 1696 estimates were probably as accurate as anyone in the 17th century could have made them.Gregory King (1648-1712) was an engraver, herald, surveyor, and Secretary to the Commissioners for the Public Accounts, but he is best known for his 1696 estimates of the wealth and population of England. Writing in 1696, but calculating for the year 1688, he put the population at approximately 5.5 million. Historians have recently doubted the accuracy of these estimates. In this book, John A. Taylor argues that King was an honest compiler of data whose eccentric calculations of the 1696 data available to him were motivated by the problems he faced. Because he used only empiricism and shop arithmetic, the 1696 estimates were probably as accurate as anyone in the 17th century could have made them.This first book-length study of King's work positions his successes and shortcomings as a statistician within the context of the whole ongoing failure of statisticians to construct a method of exact prediction about human society. In addition to this valuable commentary, Taylor also includes reprints of several scarce but very important documents by or about King, including King's 1696 estimates of national population and wealth, his autobiography, his essay on the naval trade of England, his letter on Queen Anne's Bounty, and the life of King written by George Chalmers.