"In the eighteenth century the English ruling classes – squirearchy, merchants, aristocracy – were men hard of mind an…"

"Unlike most of Europe, Britain had no censorship and its political press was both more sophisticated and more widely …"

"Trade was a national preoccupation and the constant concern of Parliament and the government, for all his contemporar…"

"The appetite of England had been whetted by the rapid commercial expansion. A world of never-ending luxury could be w…"

"The age of Walpole was rough, coarse, brutal; a world for the muscular and the aggressive and the cunning. The thin v…"

"The success of the slave trade agitation has obscured a great deal of the Sect's other social work. Active Christiani…"

"Out of doors, crime was rife and often bloody: smugglers had little compunction about slaying excise officers. And, f…"

"Upright citizens – not just blackguards and bravoes but the village Hampden too – did not shrink from force to get th…"

"The lava flow of violence ran through the political landscape, sometimes underground, sometimes on the surface. Unpop…"

"It is often the custom to think of the eighteenth century, prior to the French Revolution, as a period of effete poli…"