'The book is a distinguished work - of importance not just to eighteenth-century specialists but also to students of governmental development generally. Though authoritative and historically sophisticated, it is written in a fluent and non technical manner that should reach a wide audience. It even has a first-rate index.' - American Historical Review ' . a radical, but wholly convincing, reinterpretation of the Georgian state . Brewer's elegant analysis shows how parliament itself, then as today, readily serves as a most effective engine for the centralisation of power.' - New Statesman and Society.