Professor Mackenzie's book is an important contribution, possibly unique to the general debate, for despite the author's diffidence in describing it as 'primarily a conceptual and analytical study rather than a practical one', by discussing certain key questions from the point of view of a political scientist, he illuminates as never before the contradictions and mythologies of an institution which has a special niche in British social history and in which there is an almost inordinate pride among the population at large.

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