"Refreshing, inspiring and elegant, there are few historians active today who could write at once as stimulatingly and as readably." Historical Journal "The challenge implicit in Bentley's task is great. His response is witty, intellectually exciting, stylistically seductive, and itself stands as a challenge to broad perspectives on Victorian politics." Victorian Studies "Bentley writes with a wide ... Read morefund of knowledge; his judgements are shrewd and always worth considering. Encrusted orthodoxies are often challenged and negative home truths are brought into the open." Times Higher Education Supplement Show Less