"It was the quality of life, not the quantity of possessions, that was the justification for him of a socialist programme. He showed his dedication to this ideal not only in his writing but also in his life, and it seems to me that in raising the question of the quality of life, as a corollary of the overwhelming change in sheer quantity brought about by the Industrial Revolution, Mr Thompson is restoring as a genuine concern of economic historians the spirit of what I understand the Tawney tradition to be."