Writing Politics in Modern Britain

Gary Love is Professor of British History and Culture at Norwegian University of Science and Technology. His work focuses on the history of British political ideologies and traditions. He has published in journals such as English Historical Review, The Historical Journal, and Contemporary British History. He is the co-editor of Conservatism, Christian Democracy and the Dynamics of Transformation: Traditions, Cooperation and Influence in North-West Europe (2025). Richard Toye is Professor of Modern History at the University of Exeter. He is a specialist in the history of rhetoric and is the author of numerous articles and books, including Rhetoric: A Very Short Introduction (2013), The Roar of the Lion: The Untold Story of Churchill's World War II Speeches (2013), and Age of Hope: Labour, 1945, and the Birth of Modern Britain (2023).

• Introduction Gary Love and Richard Toye; Part I. Views from Westminster: 1. Political life-writing: biographies, memoirs, diaries, and their para-texts Richard Toye; 2. 'Unutterable trash': politician authors and the alleged decline and fall of the parliamentary novel Steven Fielding; 3. Obituarial lives Martin Farr; Part II. Perspectives from the Left: 4. Authorising herself: the political pen of Beatrice Webb Helen McCarthy; 5. Versifying politics: G. D. H. Cole and the uses of poetry Clare Griffiths; Part III. Perspectives from the Right: 6. Genres of British fascist writing: political ideas, gender, race and empire Julie V. Gottlieb and Liam Liburd; 7. The rise and fall of the 'Octopus plan': conservative political writing and publishing from the 1940s to the 1970s Gary Love; Part IV. Writing from Below: 8. Punk fanzines: formative politics and testing ideas Matthew Worley; 9. Coalfield women's writing during the 1984–5 miners' strike Natalie Thomlinson; Part V. Networks and Nations: 10. British, Irish, left, lost: revisiting Northern Ireland's 'progressive bookmen' Connal Parr; 11. From print-culture to parliament? Writing the 'New Scotland' into reality Scott Hames; Part VI. The Intellectual Public Sphere: 12. Writing for influence: social-scientists, new society and the politics of social change Lise Butler, Jane Elliott and Jon Lawrence; 13. The rhetoric of dissidence: social critics and imagined readers Stefan Collini; Index.

'Even in an age of podcasts and TikTok, the written word remains crucial to how both politicians and voters understand and articulate political ideas. The authors in this capacious and engaging volume shed a new light on how writing about politics has shaped our understanding in the modern era. The volume is an important contribution to the literature on contemporary political history. Laura Beers, American University