ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights one particular mode of interpretation forged between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Fascination with ‘whig’ history and habits in mid-century Britain emerged, in no small part, as a local product of imperial dissolution and geopolitical turmoil. In Britain, the nascent profession of history reinforced a whig discourse for new global circumstances as it increasingly centred on the codes, statutes, and state records of medieval England. The more volatile international and imperial affairs became, the more politicians and opinion-makers in interwar Britain sought to domesticate key historical narratives, albeit set against the backdrop of distinctly benevolent overseas dominion. In the bleak winter of 1947, the Great Charter once again looked a mean thing to some in Whitehall.
