"Namier had put a time bomb under the Englishman's conception of his history. (He described Trevelyan as "representative of all that is worthless in history".) The prince of bores, rude, arrogant, venerating Britain as the land of liberty that had been won by its aristocracy, Namier obsessed us even after his death. But there was another reason why Namier irritated us. Namier believed that politics was solely about power, and that ideas, religion, law were mere superstructure. We were suspicious of anyone who claimed to have discovered one infallible method of unravelling the past."