Volume 10, Number 2 · February 1, 1968
Lo-Marx
By Lawrence Stone
The English: A History of Politics and Society to 1760
by Norman F. Cantor
Simon & Schuster, 526 pp., $10.00
Here is a fat book about the English, in which, to quote the publisher's blurb, 'Norman F. Cantor has set out to re-examine the events, the men, the laws and institutions of England, without the prejudices of earlier historians and in the light of all that modern psychology, sociology and literature has taught us about man and society.' What would we reasonably expect to find in a book written by a scholar with such a modern, broad-gauged attitude to the problems and methods of historical inquiry? We would expect, first of all, a careful description of the geography of the area on the lines made familiar by the French school and so well exemplified in Braudel's famous pages on the Mediterranean basin; Mr. Cantor tells us that England is an island. We would expect a careful study of the ethnographic composition of the population, and its geographical distribution, based on place names, dialects, and so on; Mr. Cantor tells us that the English are a mongrel breed.
Review, 2484 words
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