Historians have long debated the issue of why Britain did not experience a middle-class revolution. In the mid-Victorian years, in the aftermath of the Great Reform Act and the repeal of the Corn Laws, it seemed that a decisive shift of power from the aristocracy to the middle class might take place. In this perceptive and original book, G. R. Searle shows how many MPs from business backgrounds, the so-called "entrepreneurial Radicals," came to Westminster...