Its thesis is that the Liberal Party in the United Kingdom ruined itself in dealing with the House of Lords, women's suffrage, the Irish question, and trade unions, during the period 1906–1914.
These rebellions were: Dangerfield wrote of the suffragettes that "what they did had to be done", but he offered a highly gendered and dismissive analysis, accusing them of "asserting their masculinity", "disorder, arrogance, and outrage", and "pre-war lesbianism".
Suffragette actions were portrayed as "the swish of long skirts, the violent assault of feathered hats, the impenetrable, advancing phalanx of corseted bosoms".
Because the book was viewed as "popular history" and covered a relatively recent period it largely escaped being reviewed in major historical journals.
Kenneth O. Morgan in The Age of Lloyd George: The Liberal Party and British Politics, 1890–1929 (1971) called it "brilliantly written but basically misleading", and stated that its influence on later writers was "totally disproportionate".
[7] Carolyn W. White has argued that The British studies journal Albion focused on the book and its author in Winter 1985 (Vol.
[13] From the right, in a speech to the London Academy of Excellence, the Conservative Cabinet minister Michael Gove mentioned it as one of his favourite history books.