In the 1530s, Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell carried out fundamental changes in the Tudor state. These changes amounted to a revolution in which three elements may be distinguished: the erection of the commonwealth into a sovereign empire, the king's divorce of Catherine of Aragon, and important alterations to the nature and structure of the English church. Because of the fundamental nature of the issues involved and the threat to the established order, the revolution very soon provoked widespread discontent among all sections of society. Nevertheless, opposition was spasmodic and uncoordinated, with each group of conspirators relying on another to rise, and all looking to the emperor, Charles V, to rectify the evils which, it was thought, the king's policies had brought about. Lack of effective leadership and failure to agree about what constituted the major grievances enabled the government to deal with the dissidents one by one. Cromwell was allowed to use parliament to ratify the government's programme and to manipulate public opinion. By constant vigilance and an intelligent use of the constraints placed on the populace by the penal clauses in the statutes, he secured the observance of the more unpopular measures. In spite of the overall success of this policy, the difficulties were many, and the final outcome always in doubt. Its enforcement was thus ‘a political task of some magnitude’ for the government. Probably the most determined challenge to the revolution was presented in Ireland, where rebellion broke out in June 1534.

Complaints about corrupt administrative practices were endemic to the Tudor-Stuart state. During the reign of James I, however, the issue of corruption was transformed from a staple of political discourse to an issue which not only aggravated administrative problems but also undermined the crown's very legitimacy. With the impeachment in 1621 of James' lord chancellor, Francis Bacon, for accepting bribes while holding judicial office, parliament forged for itself a weapon capable not only of rooting out corruption but unpopular government ministers as well. When administrative reform was successfully undertaken by Charles I, it came too late to resurrect the credit of the court or to restore that identification of monarch and subjects which Elizabeth had brought to its apogee only decades before. Yet the problem posed by Jacobean corruption is complex. Many of the practices for which the Jacobean court stood condemned were characteristic of the early modern state, and energetic attempts to reform the administrative apparatus were, in fact, undertaken throughout the reign. What then differentiates Jacobean administration from that of Elizabeth or the Georges and what caused the critical failure of reform? Answers to these questions may be suggested by taking a close look at the findings and fate of several investigations undertaken by one reform-minded official.

Military historians should not be content with the accurate narrative reconstruction of a war, campaign or battle. Success in the field and the generalship which produced victory or defeat can be understood only through a wider appreciation of the nature of war. Political influences, direction, control and interference; the allocation of resources between theatres of operation; manpower problems and morale; advances in military technology; relations with allies and neutrals; and all the varied logistical problems which face a commander should also engage the attention of the historian. Most wars have received sufficient treatment from the military analyst, whether scholar or soldier, to balance and enhance the work of the narrator. One conflict, however, has suffered from a surfeit of narrative accounts and a lack of broadly based analysis: the Peninsular War, 1808–14.

In the several works on the great controversy aroused by Governor Edward John Eyre's measures for suppressing the Morant Bay rebellion, in Jamaica in October 1865, British government reactions and decisions have been surprisingly neglected. For the best part of two years at the beginning of this period the government had to deal with a most serious political as well as colonial crisis. Two successive ministries were involved in this. Lord Russell's Liberals received news of the rebellion in the depths of the 1865–6 parliamentary recess. Public dispute was therefore kept, temporarily, at a distance which policy-makers could welcome. The government appointed, in December 1865, a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Jamaican troubles. Its report, which alone amongst official sources has attracted much attention from writers on the subject, was released shortly before the end of June 1866, when the Liberals, defeated in parliament, resigned. The Derby Conservatives then taking office continued the Liberals' policies over Jamaica and Governor Eyre, a deceptively simple task.

The rise of modern Catalan nationalist sentiments dates from the last quarter of the nineteenth century. In essence, these sentiments reflected a growing political, intellectual and, to a lesser extent economic resentment within the region of Catalonia against the Restoration regime which was imposed upon Spain in 1875. The breakthrough of Catalan nationalism, or regionalism as it is sometimes called, to become a significant force in Spanish politics followed the victory of four Catalanist candidates in the elections to the Cortes of 1901. Shortly afterwards the groups responsible for that electoral success came together to establish what was, with the possible exception of the Socialists (P.S.O.E.), the first modern political party of Spain, the Lliga Regionalista. Significantly, the foundation of the Lliga marked a turning point in the nature of Catalan nationalism, or at least its dominant strain. Of the four candidates elected in 1901, all for Barcelona seats, three represented economic interests. Indeed, much more than that, they were, or had been, presidents of three of the most powerful big business organisations of the region.

Lord Hardinge succeeded Minto as viceroy of India in November 1910, after a distinguished career in the diplomatic service and in the Foreign Office as permanent under-secretary from 1906 to 191 o under Sir Edward Grey. Up to the outbreak of the First World War, he was considered a successful as well as a very popular viceroy. From August 1914 until the end of his viceroyalty in March 1916, the Mesopotamia Expedition was his greatest concern and India's most important undertaking. The expedition and subsequent inquiry had important effects on Britain, India and throughout the East, and had perhaps a more profound impact upon Hardinge's career and personality than any other event during his forty-two years of government service.

Perhaps because the subject seemed so obvious, there has been little work done on women under fascism. This omission is unfortunate not only because Fascist policy was more complicated than the general impression of it but also because it offered an interesting example of the interaction between propaganda and reality in an authoritarian society. Women played an important role in several major propaganda campaigns of fascism, such as the ruralization policy and the battle to increase the birth rate. Concern for the role of women was at the heart of the conservative and stabilizing nature of fascism and, in so far as it meant the subjugation of the private lives of citizens to the demands of the State, policy towards women reflected the totalitarian and imperialistic side of fascism as well.

Let us return to the undying fascination of Bradford and Sheffield. Like Wright before him, Temmel misses the point of my using the Bradford and Sheffield examples. Many schoolteachers often take the line that if the slowest children in their classes understand something the rest can be taken to have mastered it. In a somewhat similar way, I argued that if the Liberal party could be shown to be vastly more catholic than Vincent's definition allowed for in two large places where the structure of society was least favourable to a Right and Centre, then his overall contentions would have been brought most seriously into question. 1874 was a fair date to choose and comprehensive Liberalism was easily to be observed. Examination of the two boroughs showed that British Liberalism was much more broadly-faceted than Vincentian theory allowed; that ‘Whiggery’ was not just a family word, divorced in several respects from a doctrinal context; and that the Centre and the Radicals were in fact varied. If the Centre and Radicals flourished in those places, a fortiori they would elsewhere. The ‘slowest’ so to speak had obliged with data and so the Vincent case fell to the ground. Such an approach makes some intellectual demands upon the reader, not only logical but imaginative and factual. Nevertheless, it should not have proved too much for any able person in any serious profession.