Books for Teaching British Politics

To review books introducing students to the British political system will not strike everyone as an edifying experience even when, as here, the task includes only some of many available textbooks plus a few supplemental works. Focusing on textbooks, despite their often admirable scholarship, reflects primarily our concern as teachers. My concern comes from almost forty years of teaching British politics in American classrooms. What I look for in a text probably differs from expectations of teachers in Britain. But I may also evaluate such books differently from American colleagues who teach British politics only within a broader and more popular course covering several nations. I am among the modest number of American professors devoting an entire semester to British subject-matter, and I can only try to take into account other teaching experiences when I describe the books at hand.