Welsh Journals

Search over 450 titles and 1.2 million pages

area whom the author hopes to interest; but he has surely made a valuable contribution to urban studies and provided a rich mine for the history of modern Cardiff that remains to be written. E. W. EDWARDS University College, Cardiff THE LIBERAL MIND, 1914-1929. By Michael Bentley. Cambridge University Press, 1977. Pp. 279. £ 9.50. In his introduction Dr. Bentley assures us that his study of the Liberal 'mind' in the period of Liberal division, decline and disintegration after 1914 does not belong to the category of 'higher-flown think-pieces' so disliked by Professor Elton. It is not so much a study of ideas as it is of attitudes and mentalities. It examines 'the various frames of mind through which Liberalism passed' in the years 1914 to 1929. If the book is not a 'high-flown think-piece', it is also most certainly not a study of popular attitudes and politics. Dr. Bentley states outright in his introduction: 'It is not the intention to examine Liberalism in all its facets but rather to explore the mind of its adherents as it is revealed in the activ- ities of the Liberal elite.' Like several of its stablemates in the 'Cambridge Series in the History and Theory of Politics', it is essentially a study of 'high politics'. The book is about an elite, and it is for the specialist historian, with few concessions made to the merely interested historian, let alone 'the general reading public'. Many situations are left unexplained, and even secondary figures flit in and out of the book without any real attempts at identification. The refusal to get bogged down in the explanation of situations is part of Dr. Bentley's methodology. Situations, in themselves, do not really concern him; what he is interested in is the perception of those situations by the Liberal elite. As Dr. Bentley asserts in his final chapter, 'this inquiry has concerned itself less with objective historical situations than with the the view which contemporary politicians had of them'. As a corollary, public statements ('public drapery' in Dr. Bentley's terminology) by the Liberal elite, directed towards establishing their credentials in 'objective historical situations', are not a matter for much concern; their private reflections and exchanges are what really count. Hansard barely features in the notes and not at all in the bibliography; and platform speeches are virtually ruled out of order. By contrast, over fifty private manuscript sources are listed, and are regularly cited. Those who believe that what happened at the grass-roots of politics was of rather more importance than what the senior common rooms of Oxford and Cambridge thought about Liberalism in the twenties, and who resent extended collections of snippets from the private exchanges and gossip of political and intellectual elites, will find much in this book to irritate them. The book is really directed at those who think that the study of situations, the clash of personalities, popular politics and general elections throws by no means sufficient light on the disintegration and virtual collapse of organised Liberalism. Dr. Bentley has been very firm