The Golden Talking-Shop: The Oxford Union Debates Empire, World War, Revolution, and Women

The Golden Talking-Shop: The Oxford Union Debates Empire, World War, Revolution, and Women

by Edward Pearce
The Golden Talking-Shop: The Oxford Union Debates Empire, World War, Revolution, and Women

The Golden Talking-Shop: The Oxford Union Debates Empire, World War, Revolution, and Women

by Edward Pearce

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Overview

In the late 1890s, Britain was basking in the high noon of empire, albeit with the sobering experience of the Boer War just around the corner. By 1956, the year of the Suez debacle and less than a lifetime later, the age of empire was drawing rapidly to a close and Britain's position as an independent great power was over. In between, the country had experienced two devastating world wars. India—the jewel in her imperial crown—had gained independence. And there had been far-reaching changes on the domestic front: the birth of the welfare state, full men's (and eventually women's) suffrage, and the foundation of the National Health Service, to name but a few.

Throughout this momentous period, the Oxford Union, the world's most famous debating society, continued to meet to debate and discuss the changing world around them. Sometimes their debates had important repercussions in the wider world — such as the notorious 'King and Country' debate of 1933 which made headlines around the globe and which Winston Churchill described as that 'abject, squalid, shameless avowal.' More often than not, the debates had merely a local impact, even if among the debaters were many of the leaders, thinkers, and opinion formers of the future, figures such as Harold Macmillan, Archbishop Temple, Edward Heath, and Tony Benn.

In The Golden Talking Shop, former Parliamentary sketch writer (and Union member) Edward Pearce tells the story of Britain—and the world—in the first half of the twentieth century as seen from the perspective of these Union debates: sometimes shocking, sometimes wittily amusing, and often both. The students do most of the talking, along the way revealing the changing preoccupations, prejudices, and assumptions of their changing times. A distinct pre-First World War fashion for Social Darwinism is in due course replaced by a widespread 1930s penchant for Stalinism, with civilized opinion reliably breaking in on occasion too. Above all, browsing these debates, taken straight from another age, gives the reader a vivid, sometimes piquant, sense of a Britain which is now passing from living memory—and serves as a powerful reminder of the ways in which the past and its attitudes really are a foreign country.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780198717249
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication date: 01/22/2019
Pages: 688
Product dimensions: 9.10(w) x 5.70(h) x 2.00(d)

About the Author

A member of the Oxford Union in his days as an undergraduate at Oxford, the late Edward Pearce had a long and distinguished career as a Parliamentary sketch writer for the Daily Telegraph and the New Statesman, and as a columnist for the Guardian and the Scotsman. He made intermittent appearances as a theatre critic throughout, and was one of the original panellists on BBC Radio 4's The Moral Maze. He is the author of many books on politics and current affairs, including Looking Down on Mrs Thatcher (1987), The Quiet Rise of John Major (1991), and a biography of Denis Healey (2002). Over the last decade, he increasingly turned to history writing, with biographies of Sir Robert Walpole and Pitt the Elder and Reform!: The Fight for the 1832 Reform Act (2010).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Early Days
1. Our Empire: Pride Before Fall
2. South Africa — Last Late Prize
3. Chamberlain and Milner Go to War
4. Enter the Liberals
5. 'The Whole University Marching Down the High'
6. Mourning their Lordships, Worrying about Women
7. Unions, Women, and Unionists
8. On the Eve
9. The Threshold of the New
10. The Consequences of the Peace
11. A Rather Circumspect New World
12. Imperial Fatigue and New Clouds
13. The Old Familiar Faces
14. We Go into the Dark
15. The Sunlit Uplands— almost
16. All Sorts of Dangerous Modern Ideas
17. The Old Order Not Changing Very Much
18. Invading Countries is Wrong
Envoi
Notes
Index
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