This article assesses the impact of Marshall aid on the economy and politics of Britain in the 1940s. It draws on recent literature on the domestic policies of the Attlee government and on the general impact of Marshall aid on Western Europe, together with the notion of the ‘shortage economy’ developed by Kornai. The central argument is that the deployment of Marshall aid primarily to maintain British consumption levels derived not from a governmental disregard for the importance of reviving investment and industrial output, but from a realistic appreciation of the economic and political consequences of trying to hold consumption down to an excessively austere level.

Eric Duhamel, François Mitterrand. L'unité d'un homme (Paris: Flammarion, 1998), 260 pp., FF 104, ISBN 2-0807 29 40. Bruce D. Graham, Choice and Democratic Order: the French Socialist Party, 1937-1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 430 pp., ISBN 0-521-41402-4 hardback. Robert Ladrech and Philippe Marlière, eds., Social Democratic Parties in the European Union. History, Organization, Policies. (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), 234 pp., ISBN 0-333-68940-2. Mairi Maclean, ed., The Mitterrand Years. Legacy and Evaluation (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998), 336 pp., ISBN 0-333-67167-8. Joseph P. Morray, Grand Disillusion. François Mitterrand and the French Left (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997), 168 pp., £46, ISBN 0-275-95735-7. Frédéric Sawicki, Les réseaux du Parti socialiste. Sociologie d'un milieu partisan (Paris: Belin, 1997), 335 pp. ISBN 2-7011-2078-0.

Jean-Louis Briquet, La tradition en mouvement. Clientélisme et politique en Corse (Paris: Belin, 1997), 303 pp. ISBN 2–701–12079–9.

Barbara Loyer, Géopolitique du Pays basque. Nations et nationalismes en Espagne (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1997), 416 pp. ISBN 2–738–45089–X.

Carl Levy, ed., Italian Regionalism. History, Identity and Politics (Oxford/Washington, DC: Berg, 1996), 197 pp. ISBN 1–859–73156–2.

Peter Mackridge and Eleni Yannakis, eds., Ourselves and Others. The Development of a Greek Macedonian Cultural Identity since 1912 (Oxford/New York: Berg, 1997), 259 pp. ISBN 1–859–73138–4.

Claude Hauser, Aux origines intellectuelles de la Question jurassienne. Culture et politique entre la France et la Suisse romande (1910–1950) (Courrendelin: Editions communication jurassienne et européenne (CJE), 1997), 528 pp. ISBN 2–940–11204–5.

Any examination of political movements that claim a basis in territorial and cultural identity tends to come up against a major obstacle, the problem of tracing the reasons for their emergence. There are two competing approaches: the ’culturalist‘, which considers cultural differences among communities as being themselves the chief cause of conflict; and the ’instrumentalist‘, which holds that those differences are exploited and manipulated by individuals or groups seeking to acquire or maintain a position of power.

This article aims to offer a first overview of family politics in twentieth-century Europe. The term ‘family politics’ is here taken to imply not just family policies – what states do for, or to, families – but, more broadly, the relations between individuals, families, civil society and the state. Four different visions of family politics, at different moments of the century, are analysed in detail: that of the Bolsheviks in the early years of the Russian Revolution; that of the great dictators (Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco) from the 1920s to the 1940s; that of Catholicism in the central decades of the century; and finally that of democracy, from 1945 onwards. It is argued that in each of these instances there emerges a strikingly different configuration of the relations in question (individual–family–civil society–state). For many of the Bolsheviks the family itself was the target of attack, while the individual was to be subsumed into a collectivised society. For the great dictators civil society was swiftly eliminated and the family was formally exalted, but the crucial relationships became those between the authoritarian state and regimented individuals. For the Catholic Church of Pius XII the principal menace to the Christian family was seen to come from the state on the one hand and individualism on the other; the family and an integrist society were to be the principal links of his chain. Democracy alone, albeit imperfectly, has held fast to all four elements, trying in different ways in different countries to strike a balance between them.

Gordon Cherry, Town Planning in Britain since 1900 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 260 pp., £12.99, ISBN 0–631–19994–2.

Mark Clapson, Invincible green suburbs, brave new towns (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 242 pp., £45.00 (hb), ISBN 0–719–04135–X.

Mark Clapson, Mervyn Dobbin and Peter Waterman, eds., The Best Laid Plans. Milton Keynes since 1967 (Luton: University of Luton Press, 1998), 142 pp., ISBN 1–860–20556–9.

Gilles Massardier, Expertise et aménagement du territoire. L'Etat savant (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1996), 286 pp., 160 FF, ISBN 2–738–44903–4.

Danièle Voldman, La reconstruction des villes françaises de 1940 à 1954. Histoire d'une politique (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1997), 488 pp., 270 FF, ISBN 2–738–45194–2.

About one century ago, a movement was born which aimed at reforming the physical environment of cities in order to reform society. It greatly broadened the scope of the former, piecemeal Improvement Commissions which had begun to beautify the cities. Five recent and varied publications will be reviewed here, originating from both British and French academics and planners. We shall use them to make a second reading of ideas and processes contributing to the (re)shaping of town and country in two west European countries. Often described as entities with distinct political, social and economic agendas, both countries nevertheless developed strong confidence in the planning role of the state in cities as well as in ‘town and country’.

Anthony Beevor, Stalingrad (London: Viking, 1998), 512 pp., £25.00, ISBN 0-670-87095-1. David Glanz, ed., The Initial Period of the War on the Eastern Front 22 June–August 1941 (London: Frank Cass, 1993, reprinted 1997), 511 pp., £22.50, ISBN 0-714-64298-3. David Glanz and Jonathan House, When Titans Clashed – How the Red Army Stopped Hitler (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 414 pp., £14.50, ISBN 0-700-60899-0. Leonid Grenkevich, The Soviet Partisan Movement 1941–1944 (London: Frank Cass, 1999), 368 pp., £17.50, ISBN 0-714-64428-5. Mark Harrison, Accounting for war – Soviet production, employment and the defence burden, 1940-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 338 pp., £40.00, ISBN 0-521-48265-8. Richard Overy, Russia's War (London: Penguin, 1997), 394 pp., £20.00, ISBN 0-713-99223-9. V. A. Zolotarev et al., Velikaia Otechestvennaia voina 1941–1945. Kniga 1 – Surovie ispitaniia (Moscow: Nauka, 1998), 542 pp., ISBN 5-020-10136-2. V. A. Zolotarev et al., Velikaia Otechestvennaia voina 1941–1945. Kniga 2 – Perelom (Moscow: Nauka, 1998), 499 pp., ISBN 5-020-09736-5.

This article begins by examining recent work on labour history by some French and British historians, who have been influenced by postmodernism and the ‘linguistic turn’ but often find themselves locked into what are primarily ‘cultural’ explanations of labour's identity and development. It disputes the culturalist methodology and stresses that an alternative model of discourse analysis insists on contextualisation, which in turn re-instates the significance of realms of explanation outside language, text and culture. It also sees the comparative method as a means of identifying historical structures, and concludes with a schematic account of European labour in the twentieth century.

James Loughlin, The Ulster Question since 1945 (London: Macmillan, 1998), 151 pp., £10.99 (pb), ISBN 0–333–60616–7.

David Harkness, Ireland in the Twentieth Century. Divided Island (London: Macmillan, 1996), 190 pp., £9.99 (pb), ISBN 0–333–56796–X.

Thomas Hennessey, A History of Northern Ireland, 1920–1996 (London: Macmillan, 1997), 347 pp., £12.99 (pb), £40.00 (hb), ISBN 0–333–73162–X.

Brian A. Follis, A State Under Siege. The Establishment of Northern Ireland, 1920–1925 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 250 pp., £35.00 (hb), ISBN 0–198–20305–5.

Dermot Keogh and Michael H. Haltzel, eds., Northern Ireland and the Politics of reconciliation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 256 pp., £35.00 (hb), ISBN 0–521–44430–6.

William Crotty and David Schmitt, eds., Ireland and the Politics of Change (London/New York: Longman, 1999), 264 pp., £17.99 (pb), ISBN 0–582–32894–2.

David Miller, ed., Rethinking Northern Ireland. Culture, Ideology and Colonialism. (London/New York: Longman, 1999), 344 pp., £17.99 (pb), ISBN 0–582–30287–0.

Anthony D. Buckley and Mary Catherine Kenney, Negotiating Identity: Rhetoric, Metaphor, and Social Identity in Northern Ireland (Washington: Smithonian Institution Press, 1996), 270 pp., £34.75 (hb), ISBN 1–560–98520–8.

John D. Brewer, with Gareth I. Higgins, Anti-Catholicism in Northern Ireland, 1600–1998: the mote and the beam (London: Macmillan, 1998), 248 pp., £16.99 (pb), ISBN 0–333–74635–X.

During the last three decades, and accompanying the ‘troubles’, the literature on Northern Ireland has mushroomed. Within the last ten years two surveys have attempted to summarise and categorise the major interpretations. John Whyte's Interpreting Northern Ireland covered the 1970s and 1980s and came to the conclusion that traditional Unionist and nationalist interpretations, with their emphasis on external, that is British and Irish, forces as the cause for the problem, had begun to lose out to ‘internal conflict’ interpretations. He felt, however, that this approach, too, was coming to the end of its usefulness, and he expected the emergence of a new paradigm shortly.

Vivien A. Schmidt, From State to Market? The Transformation of French Business and Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 476pp., £19.95 (pbk), ISBN 0-521-55553-1. Nikolaos Zahariadis, Markets, States and Public Policy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), 229pp., $37.50, ISBN 0-472-10542-6. Jim Tomlinson, Democratic Socialism and Economic Policy. The Attlee Years 1945–1951 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 331pp., £40.00, ISBN 0-521-55095-5. Martin Chick, Industrial Policy in Britain 1945-1951. Economic Planning, Nationalisation and the Labour Governments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1998, 221pp., £35.00, ISBN 0-521-48291-7. Jonathan Boswell and James Peters, Capitalism in Contention. Business Leaders and Political Economy in Modern Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 251pp., £45.00, ISBN 0-521-58225-3. Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello, Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1999), 843pp., FF 195, ISBN 2-070-74995-9. Richard Sylla, Richard Tilly and Gabriel Tortella, eds., The State, the Financial System, and Economic Modernization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1999, 295pp., £40.00, ISBN 0-521-59123-6.

Michèle and Jean-Paul Cointet, eds., Dictionnaire historique de la France sous l'Occupation (Paris: Tallandier, 2000), 732pp., FF 290, ISBN 2-235-02234-0. Hanna Diamond, Women and the Second World War in France 1939–1948: Choices and Constraints (Harlow: Longman, 1999), 231pp., £45.00 (hb), £14.99 (pb), ISBN 0-582-29909-8. Sarah Fishman, Laura Lee Downs, Ioannis Sinanoglou, Leonard V. Smith, Robert Zaretsky, eds., France at War: Vichy and the Historians (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2000), 336pp., £45.00, ISBN 1-859-73299-2. Bertram M. Gordon, ed., Historical Dictionary of World War II France: The Occupation, Vichy, and the Resistance, 1938–1946 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1998), 433pp., £73.95, ISBN 0-313-29421-6. Miranda Pollard, Reign of Virtue: Mobilizing Gender in Vichy France (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 285pp., £31.50 (hb), £14.00 (pb), ISBN 0-226-67349-9 and 0-226-67350-2. Lynne Taylor, Between Resistance and Collaboration: Popular Protest in Northern France, 1940–45 (Basingstoke: Macmillan; New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), 195pp., £40.00, ISBN 0-333-73640-0.

Colleagues will wish to know that the Centre Historique des Archives Nationales have published another guide to their holdings.

Benjamin Stora, Imaginaires de guerre: Algérie-Vietnam en France et aux Etats Unis (Paris: Decouverte, 1997), 252pp., FF 125, ISBN 2-707-12667-5. Benjamin Stora, Le transfert d'une mémoire – de ‘l'Algérie française’ au racisme anti-Arabe (Paris: Découverte, 1999), 148pp., FF 75, ISBN 2-707-12968-2. Martin Evans, The Memory of Resistance: French Opposition to the Algerian War (Oxford: Berg, 1997), 250pp., ISBN 1-859-73927-x. Charles-Robert Agéron, ed., La guerre d'Algérie et les Algériens, 1954–1962 (Paris: Armand Colin 1997), 346pp., ISBN 2-200-01895-9. Jean-Jacques Jordi and Mohand Hamoumou, Les harkis, une mémoire enfouie (Paris: Autrement, 1999), 139pp., FF 120, ISBN 2-282-60866-1.