LAUSR

To counter what he sees as the increasing influence of cultural studies, John Tosh has argued that historians need ‘to reconnect with that earlier curiosity about experience and subjectivity, while recognising that experience is always mediated through cultural understandings’.(1) As if in response to that plea, Balfour’s World sets out to examine and understand the experience and subjectivities of a group of men and women who dominated the politics and social discourse of upper class Britain in the late 19th century. However, this is not simply another description of the antics and apercus of the Souls, as they became known. Instead, by adopting an original approach, Ellenberger has provided a fresh and illuminating perspective of what would otherwise be familiar territory for scholars of the period.