United Kingdom

J.H. Bettey, English Historical Documents, 1906–1939 (1967), offers a selection of documentary sources. Detailed exploration of the first half of the 20th century is presented in A.J.P. Taylor, English History, 1914–1945 (1965, reissued 1990), from the Oxford series. Peter Clarke, Hope and Glory: Britain 1900–1990 (1996), is a particularly good survey. Social conditions during World War I and its aftermath are examined in Arthur Marwick, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War (1965). Interwar politics are the focus of Charles Loch Mowat, Britain Between the Wars, 1918–1940 (1955, reissued 1971); and Bentley B. Gilbert, Britain Since 1918, 2nd rev. ed. (1980). Social and economic conditions before World War II are observed in Robert Graves and Alan Hodge, The Long Week-End: A Social History of Great Britain, 1918–1939 (1940, reissued 1995); and John Stevenson, British Society, 1914–45 (1984). F.S. Northedge, The Troubled Giant: Britain Among the Great Powers, 1916–1939 (1966), is a diplomatic history of the period. Political and social aspects of involvement in the war are analyzed in Paul Addison, The Road to 1945: British Politics and the Second World War (1975); and Angus Calder, The People’s War: Britain, 1939–1945, new ed. (1992). Paul Knaplund, Britain: Commonwealth and Empire, 1901–1955 (1956, reprinted 1974), treats the decline of the empire, including the first decade of postwar developments. Other histories reaching into the postwar years are W.N. Medlicott, British Foreign Policy Since Versailles, 1919–1963, 2nd rev. ed. (1968); Sidney Pollard, The Development of the British Economy, 1914–1980, 4th ed. (1992); and Alfred F. Havighurst, Britain in Transition: The Twentieth Century, 4th ed. (1985). David Butler and Gareth Butler, British Political Facts, 1900–1985, 6th ed. (1986), is an informative reference source. C.J. Bartlett, A History of Postwar Britain, 1945–1974 (1977), is an informative, sustained narrative, and Arthur Marwick, The Penguin Social History of Britain: British Society Since 1945, new ed. (2005), is lively and opinionated. Analyses of the postwar governments include Kenneth O. Morgan, Labour in Power, 1945–1951 (1984); and Peter Hennessy and Anthony Seldon (eds.), Ruling Performance: British Governments from Attlee to Thatcher (1987). Paul R. Josephson