| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Methods/Theory

Annabel Patterson. Nobody's Perfect: A New Whig Interpretation of History. New Haven: Yale University Press. 2002. Pp. ix, 288. $27.50.

Annabel Patterson utilizes sources and methods associated with history, art history, and literature to advance an argument of large proportions, namely, that the whig interpretation of history, sharply criticized by Herbert Butterfield in 1931, is valid after all. By "whig interpretation" she has in mind both the general notion that history is progressive, a story of liberty in an almost Crocean sense, and also a specific view of British political history in which Whigs worked deliberately for the realization of certain ideals. These ideals are usually associated with what others—especially Caroline Robbins, never cited here—would call the Commonwealthman (or "real" or "honest" Whig) tradition. To develop this argument, Patterson examines a series of mostly prominent figures from the later eighteenth and very early nineteenth centuries, who, she contends, form a cohort of true believers despite wide variability in spheres of activity. They also share substantial literary knowledge and proclivities. The fact that their advocacy for what Patterson calls "liberal" principles sometimes diminished temporarily or evaporated altogether did not impede the long-term realization of their ideological ambitions; hence the book's title. Patterson rejects Namierist insistence on interest over ideas and also regularly dissents from specific interpretations in recent scholarship across several disciplines as she considers her featured figures.

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