Historians in 'the liberal hour': Lawrence Stone and J.H. Plumb re-visited

This articles assesses the careers and impact of Lawrence Stone and J. H. Plumb, examining their formative influences, and the effect which they in turn had on the writing and practice of history, particularly in the nineteen-sixties. It assesses their two most resonant books: Stone's The Causes of the English Revolution, 1529-1642 (1972) and Plumb's The Growth of Political Stability in England, 1675-1725 (1967). The article traces historiographical debate through the twentieth century and into the new millennium, focusing on the buoyant and heady atmosphere of the sixties, which so affected Stone, Plumb and their contemporaries, and the revisionist response which peaked in the nineteen-eighties, and concludes that no historian could or should claim to be unaffected by the times in which he or she writes.