This book examines the legacy of philosophical idealism in twentieth century British historical
and political thought. It demonstrates that the absolute idealism of the nineteenth century was
radically transformed by R.G. Collingwood Michael Oakeshott and Benedetto Croce. These new
idealists developed a new philosophy of history with an emphasis on the study of human agency
and historicist humanism. This study unearths the impact of the new idealism on the thought of
a group of prominent revisionist historians in the welfare state period focusing on E.H. Carr
Isaiah Berlin G.R. Elton Peter Laslett and George Kitson Clark. It shows that these
historians used the new idealism to restate the nature of history and to revise modern English
history against the backdrop of the intellectual social and political problems of the welfare
state period thus making new idealist revisionism a key tradition in early postwar
historiography.
