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Spirit', it still makes compulsive reading. Despite its brevity, it is densely packed with both information and insight into the popular movements in France and Britain during the French Revolution. It has lost none of its freshness and excitement, yet the decision to retain the original text, prefaced by a new introduction and followed by an updated bibliography, is a rather disappointing if quite understandable one. For, although the initial edition had the virtue of inviting questions instead of attempting to offer definitive answers, its limitations have become more apparent with the passage of time. Williams's pursuit of 'parallel' rather than 'comparative' history, alternating chapters devoted to each country, highlights the contrasting identities of the twin movements, but at the cost of masking similarities between them. The British already possessed a radical tradition and, as the London shoemaker Thomas Hardy put it, 'We were men while they were slaves'. Yet, differences notwithstanding, these contemporaneous phenomena influenced one another to a much greater extent than Williams suggests. They certainly shared a common ideology and social basis, even if circumstances on the French side of the Channel briefly provided the popular classes there with much more political initiative than their British counterparts. The new introduction to the book does not seek to reconsider the question of comparisons, but space is devoted to recent, pioneering work on the language of protest, the impact of the war on radicalism and the role of women in the 1790s (even though sansculottes were especially dismissive of 'those women who seek to become men' by demanding political rights!). Inevitably the author, as befits his preoccupation with the history of Wales, is anxious to add a Celtic dimension to his prefatory reflections. He apologises for the fact that the Welsh, like the Scots and Irish, were no more than occasional intruders in his original text, despite the reference to Britain in the title. However, Williams fails to redeem the pronounced Parisian bias that characterises his chapters on France, or to indicate that provincial sansculottes were often at odds with their more influential counterparts in the capital. Lyon, Marseille and Toulon, for example. surely deserve to find a place in the history of the French popular movement, for the same reason that Sheffield or Norwich have been accorded a niche on this side of the water. It should also be emphasised that recent exploration of the ideas and experiences available to craftsmen in the eighteenth-century workshop, suggests that the contemporary popular movement owed less to middle-class influence and more to the language of labour than was once supposed. Such investigations into the behaviour and mentality of the artisan unfortunately receive no more than a passing remark in this new edition. Two decades of research, partly inspired by Professor Williams's s enthusiastic endeavours, have in fact added extra dimensions and further complexity to a subject that now requires more lengthy examination if it is to be done full justice. Students and teachers of the period will, nonetheless, continue to find a great deal that is useful in this minor classic on an important theme. For, as its author rightly reiterates, 'the ideology of democracy was pre-industrial and its first serious practitioners were artisans'. MALCOLM CROOK Keele