"What Namier’s minutely detailed studies revealed was the fact that politics in 1760 consisted mainly in the jockeying for position and influence by individuals within the political elite" rather than ideas such as liberty or democracy, or rivalry with foreign kings, or social effects of industrial and technological change. "Spending many years himself, off and on, in psychoanalysis, believed that the “deep-seated drives and emotions” of the individual were what explained politics," wrote Richard J. Evans 29 Nov. 2019, reviewing "Conservative Revolutionary: the lives of Lewis Namier" (Manchester University Press, 2019) a new biography by D. W. Hayton (a participant in the History of Parliament project).