Captain Swing is a splendid study of the wave of agrarian unrest which swept south and eastern England towards the end of 1830. With painstaking research the authors have managed to reconstruct, in some detail, the events of that year, as well as the subsequent history of those rioters who were transported to Australia. Their most important achievement, however, is their reintegration into history of the "little people", those ordinary villagers who so rarely make an appearance. Despite the detail of their account (the really heavy data is consigned to the sixty pages of appendices), Hobsbawm and Rudé succeeded in producing a remarkably approachable work of social history, and Pimlico are to be applauded for reissuing their classic study.

January 1994

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Related reviews:

- books by Eric Hobsbawm
- books by George Rudé
- books about Britain + British history
- more social history
- books published by Pimlico