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The Conservative Party is Britain's most successful political party. For large parts of modern British history it has been the dominant party, though it has always suffered from internal division and periods of defeat. This colourful account of the Party's history since the late 18th century takes the reader on a voyage of discovery

The Conservative Party has been the dominant force in twentieth-century British politics. This is a systematic survey of the history of the Conservative Party from 1900 to John Major's election victory of 1992. The team of expert contributors includes both historians and political scientists

A review essay on books by (1) Mark Garnett & Philip Lynch (Eds), The Conservatives in Crisis: The Tories after 1997 (Manchester, UK: Manchester U Press, 2003); (2) E. H. H. Green, Ideologies of Conservatism: Conservative Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century (Oxford, UK: Oxford U Press, 2002); (3) Ted Honderich, Conservatism: Burke, Nozick, Bush, Blair? (London: Pluto, 2005); & (4) Bruce Pilbeam, Conservatism in Crisis? Anglo-American Conservative Ideology after the Cold War (London: Palgrave, 2003).

Neither spatial models of party competition nor the 'Westminster' model of British politics explain the phenomenon of Thatcherism. One explanation of its success, examined by Crewe and Searing, suggests that Mrs Thatcher sought to convert the Conservative party and the wider electorate to her distinctive brand of liberal Whiggism and traditional Toryism. They found little evidence of the success of this, however, among the British electorate as a whole. In this paper, data from the first national survey of Conservative party members demonstrates that she had little success in converting the Conservative party to these ideas either, although she did have a secure ideological base within the party. The results also suggest that her successor, John Major, has a rather different support base within the party from that of Mrs Thatcher. The implications of these findings for spatial models of party competition and the Westminster model of British politics are discussed.