Paul Langford – författare

First published as part of the best-selling The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, Paul Langford's Very Short Introduction to Eighteenth-Century Britain spans from the aftermath of the Revolution of 1688 to Pitt the Younger's defeat at attempted parliamentary reform.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

This book offers a major reassessment of the place of propertied people in eighteenth-century England. Common views of politics in this period postulate aristocratic dominance coexisting with plebian vitality. Paul Langford explores the terrain which lay between the high ground of elite rule and the low ground of popular politics, revealing the vigorous activity and institutional creativity which prevailed in it.Dr Langford shows us a society in which middle-class men and women increasingly enforced their social priorities, vested interests, and ideological preoccupations. In an age imbued with the propertied mentality the machinery, formal and informal, for managing public affairs was constantly revised. Political and religious prejudices are shown in retreat before the requirements of propertied association. Parliament appears as the willing tool of interests and communities which were by no means submissive to the traditional authority of the gentry. The nobility is seen obediently adapting to the demands of those whom it sought to patronize. This perceptive study makes a significant contribution to our understanding of eighteenth-century society and politics.'masterly book', Times Literary Supplement'impressive erudition and immense industry', Times Higher Education Supplement'as controversial as it is comprehensive . . . Langford . . . is a conscientious and scrupulous scholar', English Historical Review'written with great distinction and a certain aloof wit . . . an impressive piece of work . . . He has certainly given an old picture a new slant, and his thesis commands the attention of all students of 18th-century England', Spectator

In the 17th century the English were often depicted as a nation of barbarians, fanatics, and king-killers. Two hundred years later they were more likely to be seen as the triumphant possessors of a unique political stability, a vigorous industrial revolution, and a world-wide empire. These may have been British achievements; but the virtues which brought about this transformation were perceived as being specifically English. Ideas of what constituted Englishness changed from a stock notion of waywardness and unpredictability to one of discipline and dedication. The evolution of the so-called national character once more the subject of scrutiny and debate is traced through the impressions and analyses of foreign observers, and related to English ambitions and anxieties during a period of intense change.

This book, the first volume to appear of the New Oxford History of England, offers the most authoritative, comprehensive general history of England between the accession of George II and the loss of America. Though conventionally seen as static and politically stable, the eighteenth century was an age of extraordinary vitality and variety, of contrasts and change. Beneath the serene surface of aristocratic government, stately manners, and Georgian elegance, lay a less orderly world of treasonable plots, riotous mobs, and Hogarthian vulgarity. While rapid commercial growth and burgeoning bourgeois pretensions gave rise to the positive achievements of military success and imperial expansion, cultural confidence and polite manners, tensions and contradictions simmered and threatened. Evangelical enthusiasm jostled with scientific rationalism, oligarchical politics with popular insubordination, entrepreneurial opulence with plebian poverty, sentimentality with utilitarian reform. Using the most up-to-date research, Paul Langford reveals the true character of the age, and demonstrates that eighteenth-century society was both strengthened and stretched by the changes to which it was subjected. THE NEW OXFORD HISTORY OF ENGLAND series (General Editor: J. M. Roberts) The first volume of Sir George Clark's Oxford History of England was published in 1934. Over the following fifty years that series established itself as a standard work of reference, and a repertoire of scholarship for hundreds of thousands of readers. The New Oxford History of England, of which this is the first volume, is its successor. Each volume will set out an authoritative view of the present state of scholarship, presenting a distillation of the new knowledge built up by a half-century's research and publication of new sources, and incorporating the perspectives and judgements of a new generation of scholars. It is the intention of the General Editor and the Publisher that shall worthily take the place of its predecessor as the standard authoritative account of the national history and achieve a similar classic standing.

A scholarly edition of the writings and speeches of Edmund Burke. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

The Excise Crisis Society and Politics in the Age of Walpole

This volume takes a thematic approach to the history of the eighteenth century in the British Isles, covering such issues as domestic politics (including popular political culture), religious developments and change, and social and demographic structure and growth. Paul Langford heads a leading team of contributors, to present a lively picture of an era of intense change and growth in which all parts of Britain and Ireland were increasingly bound together by economic expansion and political unification.

This book is intended for undergraduates studying the history of the British Isles in the eighteenth century. Background reading for students of eighteenth-century philosophy, politics, and literature. Also for the interested general reader.

In the seventeenth century the English were often depicted as a nation of barbarians, fanatics, and king-killers. Two hundred years later they were more likely to be seen as the triumphant possessors of a unique political stability, vigorous industrial revolution, and a world-wide empire. These may have been British achievements; but the virtues which brought about this transformation tended to be perceived as specifically English. Ideas of what constituted Englishness changed from a stock notion of waywardness and unpredictability to one of discipline and dedication. The evolution of the so-called national character - today once more the subject of scrutiny and debate - is traced through the impressions and analyses of foreign observers, and related to English ambitions and anxieties during a period of intense change.

This fourth volume in the Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke series is also the last of the three Party and Parliament volumes, which follow Edmund Burke through from the opening of a newly elected Parliament which assembled on 31 October 1780 to his retirement from the Commons in 1794.This volume addresses Burke's views on the authority of Parliament over the British provinces in India, and his concerns about the implications of the French Revolution for British politics. He also expresses his views on issues that had always greatly interested him, such as the reform of criminal law, the confinement of debtors, and the abolition of what he regarded as outmoded economic regulations.The texts for the items, which have appeared in previous editions of Burke's Works, have been reconstructed, largely by the use of manuscripts, and many of the shorter speeches appear here in print for the first time.

This volume will cover methods developed in the last decade, the usage of which are enabling the development of cheaper, cost-effective and structurally stable vaccines for global use.