David Barrowclough (Cambridge): The Wonderful Discovery of Witches' Unearthing the Occult: Necromancy and Magic in Seventeenth-Century England. A neo-Darwinian — yet apparently value-free — approach to studying English society: Krishan Kumar reviews Very Different, but Much the Same: The Evolution of English Society Since 1714 by W G Runciman. Is debt really that bad? Jaume Ventura and Hans-Joachim Voth on the towering debts, rapid tax hikes, and constant state of war that led to Britain’s Industrial Revolution, showing that the devil is in the detail when assessing sovereign debt. Tony Quinn on John Bull and its famous Bullets prize competitions. Harriet Ward (Sussex): “While the Unemployment of the 1930s was Still Regarded as a Tragedy, that of the 1980s was not”: How and Why did the Perception of Unemployment Change Under Thatcher? Fear in those blue eyes: David Runciman reviews Margaret Thatcher: The Authorised Biography Vol. II: Everything She Wants by Charles Moore.
