The events of 1688 have been seen by historians following in the footsteps of the Macaulay as a ‘preserving’ revolution, which allowed Britain to avoid the fate of France and its ‘destructive’ revolution of a century later.
Following recent works by Tim Harris and Ted Vallance Steve Pincus’s 1688: The First Modern Revolution seeks to challenge this view, trying perhaps too hard to group 1688 with 1789 and 1917. Despite this it is a polemic well worth reading, according to Mark Knights, whose lengthy review features this week in the IHR’s Reviews in History.