Word: namier
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CROSSROADS OF POWER (234 pp.)-Sir Lewis Namier-Macmillan...
...Some political philosophers complain of a 'tired lull' and the absence at present of argument on general politics in this country." wrote British Historian Lewis Namier before his death in 1960. "Practical solutions are sought for concrete problems, while programs and ideals are forgotten by both parties. But to me this attitude seems to betoken a greater national maturity, and I can only wish that it may long continue undisturbed by the workings of political philosophy...
This was not the last gasp of a tired old man; it was the seasoned judgment of a historian who had seen what ideology can do. Namier felt that most ideologies were shams, and was prepared to prove it. This he did by writing detailed biographies of innumerable people to show that their motives were rarely the ones they professed. Namier's history bulged with facts and figures and so many quotes that he often seems not to be writing at all but excerpting. Yet Namier revolutionized the writing of history and became in the eyes of his British...
Pleasures of Parliaments. In his greatest work, Namier demolished the long-accepted interpretation of 18th century English politics. Englishmen had been taught that the noble heroes of Parliament had battled wicked King George III to preserve English liberties. Namier sifted speeches of the period, records, diaries and letters. When he was stumped by the character of a Parliamentarian, he consulted a psychoanalyst. He finally gathered all his biographical sketches into two massive volumes, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III and England in the Age of the American Revolution, which proved that there had been no ideological...
...Hall to become a part-time tutor in History and Literature while working on his doctoral thesis, a study of English Elections under Sir Robert Walpole. He then obtained a year's leave of absence to carry on research in England, where he went to work under L. B. Namier, the leading scholar in the Parliamentary field, but only after promising Namier he would be around at least two years to cover the extensive topic. Perkins was able to arrange for a second year's leave, then a third (he was having a good time) but when Namier began talking...