J. P. D. Cooper. Propaganda and the Tudor State: Political Culture in the Westcountry. (Oxford Historical Monographs.) New York: Clarendon Press Of Oxford University Press. 2003. Pp. xii, 283. $80.00

Regional identity has been a controversial issue in Britain over the past twenty five years. Among its other consequences, Margaret Thatcher's new-style conservatism produced prosperity for a Tory heartland geographically centered in the southeast of England, and disaffection in the “peripheral” parts. Election maps showed the state of play with aesthetically pleasing starkness: blue for the home counties; red and yellow for an expanding periphery that included not only the so-called Celtic fringe of Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall but, also, increasingly, all parts north of Watford. Those areas remained politically impotent as the blue brigade forged ahead with its revolution in government. The resulting tensions found expression in many ways. These included a wave of arson attacks in Wales and Cornwall on vacation homes owned by Englishmen, bought with what appeared to many to be the proceeds of that...