This book examines attempts by the British Conservative party in the interwar years to capture and train the minds of the new electorate and create a counter-culture to what they saw as the intellectual hegemony of the Left. It is an important contribution to the political culture of Conservatism from the late 1920s to the early 1950s with a particular emphasis on the social and intellectual history of the Conservative milieu. This volume tells the fascinating story of the Bonar Law Memorial College, Ashridge, founded in 1929 as a ‘College of citizenship’ to provide political education through ... More

This book examines attempts by the British Conservative party in the interwar years to capture and train the minds of the new electorate and create a counter-culture to what they saw as the intellectual hegemony of the Left. It is an important contribution to the political culture of Conservatism from the late 1920s to the early 1950s with a particular emphasis on the social and intellectual history of the Conservative milieu. This volume tells the fascinating story of the Bonar Law Memorial College, Ashridge, founded in 1929 as a ‘College of citizenship’ to provide political education through both teaching and publications. The College aimed at creating ‘Conservative Fabians’ who were to publish and disseminate Conservative literature, which meant not only explicitly political works but literary, historical and cultural work that carried implicit Conservative messages. After 1945, as the Conservative party sought to jettison its Baldwinian Past, Ashridge lost its political anchor, and moved, through complex stages, to being refounded as a management training college in 1954. This book modifies our understanding of the history of intellectual debate in Britain and it sheds new light on the history of the ‘middlebrow’ and how that category became a weapon for the Conservatives. It will become necessary reading both for scholars and students of modern British history and politics and more generally for those interested in the history of Conservatism.