Abstract

There are books which, in the manner of a legal brief, seek to present a case by marshalling evidence around a central thesis or ‘claim’. Then there are books which are more like canvases: they assemble a wide variety of elements into a hitherto unknown or at least unseen pattern. Roy Porter’s thesis, which can be pieced together from a few half-sentences repeated at the beginning, middle and end of this book, is that there was a British Enlightenment—which was general enough that he dispenses with the need to address the question of ‘national enlightenments’, particularly the Scottish and the Irish, in this case—and that the British Enlightenment was the genuine source, or site, of the creation of ‘modernity’ or modern society, even “the birthplace of the modern” world, as his title indicates.