One of the distinctive strengths of this book is that its contributors approach the topic of early-modern British political thought from the perspective not merely of political theory but of history and imaginative literature as well. I cannot hope to summarize their individual contributions here, but there is fortunately no need to do so, for they are all written with unfailing lucidity as well as outstanding scholarship. Instead I want to say something about the adjectives I have just employed in speaking of the volume as a whole – early-modern, British and political. My aim will be to tug on three corresponding threads that seem to me to run throughout the book.

First, British. John Morrill's principal purpose is to insist on the need to concentrate on the history specifically of British political thought. It is not perhaps surprising to find an historian of what used to be called the English revolution placing so much emphasis on what Tim Harris at the start of his chapter nicely calls the Britannic turn. One of the most valuable developments in the historiography of the civil war period during the past generation has undoubtedly been the reconsideration of the Scottish and Irish elements in the narrative. From being assigned mere walk-on parts in a basically English drama, the uprising in Scotland and the Irish rebellion have come to be discussed in such a way as to reconfigure the entire revolutionary era as a war of the three kingdoms.