Debut book by Dr Emily Jones makes History Today books of the year list

Edmund Burke and the Invention of Modern Conservatism, 1830-1914 by Exeter alumna Dr Emily Jones (2010, Modern British and European History) has been named one of History Today magazine’s best history books of 2017.

The editor of History Today, Paul Lay, named Edmund Burke and the Invention of Modern Conservatism as one of his two favourite history books of the past year. He wrote: ‘One of the architects of conservatism, as an intellectual tradition as well as a political force, is Edmund Burke. He’s the subject of an intriguing, surprisingly accessible study by Emily Jones.’

Edmund Burke and the Invention of Modern Conservatism traces the crooked path travelled by the Irish Whig who often found himself at odds with the Tory forerunners of the Conservatives and explains how, by the opening of the First World War, he had been embraced within the Conservative tradition. The Financial Times listed it among its recommended summer reads and Richard Bourke of the Literary Review described it as a ‘vital contribution’ to its field.

As well as being singled out by History Today, Edmund Burke and the Invention of Modern Conservatism also made the Financial Times’s round-up of the best history books published in 2017.

You can read more about Edmund Burke and the Invention of Modern Conservatism here, and read the full list of History Today magazine’s best books of 2017 here.