Customer Reviews

English History, 1914-1945 (Oxford History of England)

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I enjoy AJP Taylor as a prose stylist and frequently provocative historian, especially when his focus is on European history. In this foray into domestic matters, he provides a good overview of 30 tumultuous years in British history. However, it was only in reading Correlli Barnett's "Collapse of British Power" that I realized a glaring deficiency of Taylor's book.

Barnett tackles head-on the key issue of this time period: Britain's decline from a first-rate world power to its near-defeat in World War II and its subesequent loss of economic independence to the United States. Taylor skirts this crucial question, instead paying closer attention to topics more congenial to his "progressive" political stance, such as the condition of the working classes and the slow climb to power of the Labour party.

Taylor concludes his book by noting that after World War II, Britons no longer sang "Land of Hope and Glory" or "England Arise" but argues that "England had risen all the same." It is hard to agree with that contention.