The Police and the People

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One has come to expect from Mr. Cobb's work a combination of erudition, verve, originality and eminent readability and those who approach this volume with these expectations will in no way be disappointed. It falls into three parts, each an entity in itself: the first a critical and humourous discussion of the sources at the disposal of the popular historian, the second a study of the manifold expressions of popular protest, and the last a moving analysis of popular response to dearth.But it is much more than this. It serves also as a kind of manifesto directed against a number of approaches to the writing of social history - not least pour faire l'histoire il faut savoir compter school who have... erected the statistic into a lifeless end in itself. Where have all the people gone? Mr. Cobb wants to know, an as a historian he is dissatisfied with an answer that requires the use of log tables or the perusal of a graph...The result is a work teeming in humanity and with the infinite variety of a breughel canvas.English Historical Review