The Rage of Party: How Whig versus Tory made modern Britain

by George Owers

The late 17th century saw the rise of a new phenomenon that would transform Britain party politics.
Beginning with a furious dispute over whether to allow a Roman Catholic - James II - to become king, the division between Whig and Tory marked the chief political battlelines of a ferociously polarised country for several tumultuous generations.

The Rage of Party traces the thrilling story of how these two parties - one representing the established social forces of squire, church and monarchy; the other the rising forces of financial power and Protestant Dissent - settled the defining debates of the age, culminating in a dramatic fight to the death over peace, piety and the Protestant Succession in the age of Queen Anne. Their bitter disputes over religion, economics and the constitution profoundly influenced many of the forces and institutions that shaped the modern world, ranging from the City of London and the Bank of England to the Union between England and Scotland and the British Empire.

From vicious pamphlet wars and some of history's most corrupt and riotous elections through a revolution, multiple assassination attempts and enough scandals to make even the most louche modern politician blush, this brilliantly researched book shows how a motley crew of rakes, hypocrites, cunning tricksters and scheming clergymen engaged in not only in a political confrontation that threatened a second civil war, but a culture war that still finds echoes in 21st-century Britain.

Genres: History, Politics, British Literature

576 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2025

Reviews

[History Today]

What’s in a word? In 1965 the great Cambridge historian Professor (later Sir) J.H. Plumb delivered the Ford Lectures at Oxford, on the topic of political stability in 18th-century England. One of those lectures was titled ‘The Rage of Party’. In it, Plumb expressed profound suspicion of Lewis Namier’s famous thesis, then tremendously fashionable, that principles matter not a jot and the sole driver of 18th-century politics was individual lust for glory. One needed only to feel the heat rising from public debate in this era to appreciate the importance of Whig and Tory, argued Plumb: ‘Party was real and it created instability.’ Two years later, in 1967, Plumb’s greatest student, Geoffrey Holmes, published his masterpiece of historiography, British Politics in the Age of Anne, in which Plumb’s scepticism of the Namierite position morphed into something more subtle. For Holmes, it was fundamentally the structures of partisanship, not its passions, that defined the era. Plumb’s ‘rage of party’ became Holmes’ ‘age of party’.

Now the ‘rage’ is back. George Owers’ tremendously entertaining new book is an unabashedly narrative account of the twists and turns of Whig and Tory through a period of immense turmoil, both foreign (protracted wars with France and Spain) and domestic (a royal coup, a crisis of succession, and ten general elections within 25 years). In some respects, this is a deeply unfashionable endeavour. To be sure, there has been some excellent scholarship on the origins of party in areas such as intellectual history (recent work by Max Skjönsberg comes to mind), but narrative historians have typically found it difficult to articulate what was at stake in early 18th-century politics, particularly when set against the grand set pieces of the Civil Wars and Protectorate a generation earlier. Owers negotiates this problem with considerable brio, combining the high politics of court and parliament with a broader-brush history of ideas, religion, and culture. Equal attention is devoted to sex lives, medical ailments, and boozing as to parliamentary division lists and electoral tallies. It makes for a heady cocktail of policy and personality.

Read the rest of the review at https://www.historytoday.com/archive/...

Joseph Hone is the author of a book about Robert Harley, The Paper Chase: The Printer, the Spymaster, and the Hunt for the Rebel Pamphleteers (Chatto & Windus, 2020).

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rage of Party: How Whig Versus Tory Made Modern Britain tells the story of the tumultuous decades between the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 and the accession of George I in 1714. Following the twists and turns of the politics, the players – the Whig Junto, the calculating Robert Harley, the ‘traitor’ Henry St John, the military hero Marlborough – and their monarchs, the turbulent waters of these years are explored in distinctive, engaging style. Throughout it all, author George Owers brings the story to bear on modernity, describing how the two-party system and a certain political style came to prevail, and how divisions over everything that mattered – religion, economics, control, political outlook, international relations – set the stage for the world as we know it today. It is a tale of the high politics and low scheming, of assassination plots and international wars, of finance and culture that went to the heart of all walks of English (and then British) society in those years, and that tainted it for centuries thereafter.

Rage of Party is punchy, and pacy, and fun. A lover of the salacious side of history myself, this is the sort of prose that I can really dive into. Alongside the grittier political aspects are the stories, the whimsies, and the scandals that make the protagonists leap from the page. The drinking, the duels, the desecration of churches all describe the times and the people in vibrant, stunning three dimensions. One can’t help but feel that Owers has enjoyed writing Rage of Party as much as his audience will enjoy reading it. Political history does not have to be stuffy and dry, and Owers proves the case.

Owers therefore excels in overturning this preconception – and many other, academic, myths as well. Not only has he written a thumping good read, a book enjoyable for the story in and of itself, and where the characters in all their multiple aspects come alive, their fancies and foibles sympathetically expressed; where the scene is painted in vivid technicolour, allowing the protests and battles, the cheers and celebrations to shine with bright immediacy; where wit and knowledge powerfully combine to form a grand narrative that would challenge any of the great masters of the past. Not only has he looked afresh at previous scholarship, found it to be wanting, and rehabilitated both the era and the actors to bring about a new understanding of the time and its meaning.

As well as all this, he has written a political history that could not be more relevant, and more illuminating. Contemporary politics is divisive, and is possibly becoming more sectarian. Commentators cast around, grasping at historical parallels. Rarely, however, have they turned to the genesis of our modern system. Owers, in Rage of Party, provides that corrective. With finely honed skill, he has both shown where we should be looking if we want to understand the causes and consequences of extreme party-political discord, and he has created an indisputable case for why political history, now perhaps more than ever, needs to be studied and understood. No wonder that Rage of Party has won so many awards. This is one political history book that absolutely should be read.

[Jason Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engaging look at the first decades of party Politics in Britain . After the restoration, the cavaliers sympathisers became the Tories - high church , pro Stuart and pro absolute monarchy of sorts . While the parliamentary sympathisers became the whigs and eventually the liberals - nonconformist or low church , pro the changes of regime brought by the glorious revolution . These were violent years politically .

Shades of grey of course- some Tories were happy to change from the Stuarts and Jonathan Swift, of Gullivers Travels fame cheerfully said he was religiously Tory but politically Whig .

Important stuff here - the glorious revolution, the union of Scotland end England ( shamelessly cynical on England’s part as it was designed to stop Scotland helping France rather than any benefit to them ) and the beginnings of modern medical science with inoculation. And lots of duels, riots and coffee .

[Conner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Making sure everyone knows I'm a Whig by drinking Port at the function instead of Tory claret

Also, who knew the Iroquois sent a delegation to London in 1710?

Great narrative of a great time period full of genuinely funny anecdotes from Viscount Bolingbroke signing a treaty on his mistresses' rear end or the Marquess of Wharton's career being eternally dragged by the time he drunkenly shit in a communion table.

Ultimately in the English speaking world very little has really changed in terms of political parties or culture wars since the Whigs and Tories started it. I waited years for this book after seeing on Twitter that the author was working on it and it was great.

[Alex Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely loved this book- not on an era I knew anything about but it is such a thrilling and accessible introduction into a world of political intrigue that was completely unknown to me. I desperately hope George Owers writes more books, and am sure this is a book I will turn to again.

[Kip Poindexter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I suspect it is not unusual for me to choose my reading from sources I have come to trust. Time is too precious to spend on a book that another might be even better at telling a similar story or covering similar ground. Law & Liberty Book Review is a common source for me here, and the decision to read this book came from a review by Helen Dale posted December 9, 2025. Now that I have finished this book, I reread her article, which was fun to do after emerging from the well-written story. Here is a snippet from Helen's review that explains the book well and why I agree it made for a good story and one that I learned a lot from:

“The process by which England and Scotland stopped fighting wars over both religion and questions of governance and decided to hold regular parliamentary elections about them instead is both a remarkable story and hard to write well. The period 1689-1725 is often considered too complex for narrative history: Rage of Party is its first treatment for a general audience.

Films and plays—let alone histories—that depend on ensemble casts and episodic plots can spin out of a writer’s control, so Owers does two things to keep his story straight. First, he focuses—much as a novelist would—on rounded portraits of major historical figures. You will never forget his Duke of Marlborough, his depictions of the Whig “junto” lords, or the financial wizard that was Sidney Godolphin. Secondly, he builds the book outwards from two extraordinary people who dominated the period: Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford—arguably our first prime minister—and the country’s monarch, Queen Anne. They provide a point around which every other figure pivots.”

In summary, this book (as is too often the case with good ones) makes me want to follow all kinds of related rabbit trails, and what I am left with is 10 more books I add to my want-to-read shelf, knowing full well that I may probably only get to 0, 1, or 2 before I meet our Maker.

[Mil · Rating 5 out of 5]

“In a sense, we are all still in our heart of hearts, either Whig or Tory. Which are you?”
A study in the phrase « plus ça change » for anyone who thinks our current landscape is unique. Fascinating how many threads of common schisms and tactics dominating politics today were fomented in this period. Post-restoration politics and the idea of what the country and its governance should be and indeed, had been, the book makes clear, were contested and often deceptively radical. War, capitalism, corruption, refugees, liberty, duty to institutions, relationships with Europe, the constitutional settlement of the UK and culture wars all in the words of the author, have “uncanny echoes” with the UK of today.

Also enjoyed the sketching out of the relationship between palace, government parties and press. Great character studies. The bit to contemplate is what (while it still exists as some ideological basis for what “the UK” is) has supplemented the Church in our idea of relation to the political order and government and how we relate to it. All in all very enjoyable - and I wish this or someone teaching something like it existed when I was learning about this period for the first time.

[Maryann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Could not put it down. The political struggle that led to the modern party system immediately following the Glorious Revolution sounds dry as dust. It wasn’t. I know nothing about this period, had never heard of most of the characters and still found it fascinating. I highly recommend this book.

[Simon Dane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thorough and detailed history and well written. The shame is that for me, this is a period in British history that I just can’t get excited about.

[Denis Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely original history book which seriously engages with the ideas that led to the formation of political parties in England. Also makes The Favourite (2018) an even better film.