Retrospective Thirty-five Years On: John K. Walton, Lancashire: A Social History 1558-1939 (Manchester University Press, 1987)

John Walton’s book on the social history of Lancashire from the accession of Elizabeth I to the outbreak of the Second World War appeared 35 years ago. It was a remarkable but not entirely uncontroversial achievement, large in scope and scale, and very personal in its character and approach. Curiously, it was not reviewed in this journal. Now, three and half decades later, this paper offers a retrospective assessment of a volume which was described by one reviewer at the time as ‘the best history of Lancashire to be written so far’.