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The Origins of Liberal Politics, 1830–1874

themselves, she suddenly forgets that moderns are as human as their predecessors. O'Day's discussion of the twentieth-century debate over the Reformation would have been much better had she placed it in its generational and political contexts. One looks in vain for world wars, welfare states, economic materialism, egalitarianism, and secularization in her treatment of this century's historians, yet they are the springs from which modern historians have drawn their questions about the Reformation. Moreover, there are no identifiably non-English historians in her treatment. Nonetheless, one of the striking things about the study of English history in the twentieth century is that it is being done by so many foreigners. Whether they are refugees from the Reich, Idaho farm boys, or Antepodeans, they come to the English Reformation with experiences, cultural traditions, and questions that change the ways in which the Reformation is understood. O'Day's book is useful as an introduction to the ways English historians have thought about the Reformation, but it suffers from schizophrenia. She portrays dead historians as part of their culture, living ones as objective scientists. Taken together, these books remind us of what good history ought to be, contextual and culturally aware. Any study of church and state in Tudor England should take into account the importance of religion to people in the late Middle Ages, the structure and function of church and state, and the intellectual, political, and religious traditions that bind the historian. Ultimately, one must never lose sight of the complex and self-contradicting aspirations and desires that motivate people in all ages, actors and analysts alike.