THE student of recent history ignores at his peril the warning
of Gibbon: 'I should shrink with horror from the modern
history of England, where every character is a problem, and
every reader a friend or an enemy; where a writer is supposed to
hoist a flag of party, and is devoted to damnation by the adverse
faction.' To the dangers of partiality are now added the dangers
of obliteration -- obliteration by the mass of materials from which
recent history must be written. Some may complain of a lack of
materials. The proper complaint is of their abundance: the writings
of the times in books and periodicals, the contemporary and later
studies of politics, economic conditions, social progress; the bio-
graphies and memoirs which tell a good deal, already, about the
ideas and motives of the makers of policy. There will always be
much more for the historian to read about these years than any one
man can hope to master; so that he will need, as I do, more than
the usual indulgence for his sins of omission. He will also find
that he must be stern in using his pruning-hook, lest length and
price keep readers at a distance.

The dangers of partiality are perhaps more difficult to avoid.
because less easily perceived by one's self. Since any work of this
kind is bound to be, in some sort and however unwittingly, auto-
biographical, I must explain that the first twenty-three years of my
life have been spent in England, and mainly in Oxford, and most of
the remainder, since 1934, in the United States. I have tried to
discover the truth, by reading and by conversation -- particularly on
two lengthy visits to England in 1947-48 and 1952. I have tried
throughout to exercise judgment and to profit from the perspective
afforded by some lapse of time and the interposition of the Second
World War.

For help in my task I owe many debts of gratitude. The first is
to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, which
honoured me with one of its fellowships in 1947-48, enabling me
to spend over a year in Great Britain, reading and travelling. I am
grateful for this help; but even more for the magnanimous way in
which it was given, as characteristic of the foundation as it is

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