'[This book] provides a brilliantly penetrating discussion of the historiography of the Stuart period over the last 150 years...[,] a thought-provoking exploration of why historians of that period have chosen to write about their subjects as they have...[and] a sparkling portrait of how it felt to be an academic historian during the last quarter of the twentieth century...I can think of few works of history which I have enjoyed reading more.' - Mark Stoyle, English Historical Review 'Intelligently introduces the student to historians as well as to history - and also to why historians and even societies produce the history that they do.' - Diarmid MacCulloch 'This is a consistently lively and vigorous 'textbook with a difference' that lights up different phases of the historiography of the Stuart period. Some of its confident assertions will provoke disagreement. Nonetheless, Ronald Hutton always repays a careful reading...' - Times Higher Education Supplement Textbook Guide 'This is a consistently lively and vigorous 'textbook with a difference' that lights up different phases of the historiography of the Stuart period.' - R.C. Richardson, Times Higher Education Supplement