The Reader's Guide to British History is the essential source to secondary material on British history. This resource contains over 1,000 A-Z entries on the history of Britain, from ancient and Roman Britain to the present day. Each entry lists 6-12 of the best-known books on the subject, then discusses those works in an essay of 800 to 1,000 words prepared by an expert in the field. The essays provide advice on the range and depth of coverage as well as the emphasis and point of view espoused in each publication.

An impressively thorough exploration of the changing functions, character and experience of English towns in a key age of transition which includes smaller communities as well as the larger industrialising towns. Among the issues examined are demography, social stratification, manners, religion, gender, dissent, amenities and entertainment, and the resilience of provincial culture in the face of the growing influence of London. At its heart is an authoritative study of urban politics: the structures of authority, the realities of civic administration, and the general movement for reform that climaxed in the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835.

East Anglia's political and economic importance in the middle ages is plain for all to see, stemming initially from its crucial position on the eastern shores of the North Sea and its participation in the successive patterns of invasion and settlement of England. Archaeological evidence abounds: burial mounds, castles, great churches deriving from the wealth created by sheep, yeoman farmhouses, and market towns of eighteenth-century elegance. Behind these visible manifestations of the march of centuries lie particular histories, and these seventeen studies from the region's best scholars reveal some of those jigsaw puzzles of time, ranging from the Domesday herring industry by way of monasteries, memorials, wills, Gainsborough and garden history to the growing passion for natural history and science in the mid nineteenth century. They make a serious contribution to an understanding of the region, and at the same time honour Norman Scarfe, whose own studies have played a notable part in the interpretation of East Anglia's history. Contributors JOHN BLATCHLY, JAMES CAMPBELL, CHRISTOPHER HARPER-BILL, CAROLE RAWCLIFFE, DAVID DYMOND, PETER NORTHEAST, COLIN RICHMOND, JUDITH MIDDLETON-STEWART, DIARMAID MacCULLOCH, HASSELL SMITH, TOM WILLIAMSON, EDWARD MARTIN, JONATHAN THEOBALD, RICHARD WILSON, HUGH BELSEY, STEVEN PLUNKETT, GEOFFREY MARTIN, MICHAEL HOWARD.

The abolition of the Scottish and Irish Parliaments in 1707 and 1800 created a United Kingdom centred upon the Westminster legislature. This text discusses what this meant for the four nations involved, and how conceptions of English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh identities were affected.