Les conservateurs britanniques dans la bataille des idées

KEYWORDS: ASHRIDGE COLLEGE – CONSERVATIVE PARTY – THINK TANK – HISTORY OF IDEAS

A think tank ahead of its time, a place of research and learning, a center of citizen formation, Ashridge College would play an essential role in the transformation of conservative identity. It sought to create a breeding ground of conservative intellectuals capable of sparring with their counterparts on the left and promoting conservative principles.

Ashridge College, today one of the premier schools of commerce in Great Britain, testifies the ability of conservative leaders to find innovative solutions to the new rules of the game of political representation, to notice and respond to profound societal changes while giving themselves a political shape and language which translates into an adhesion of the masses.

The book is unusual in that it focuses on the intellectual history of the Conservative party, but more precisely on the party's efforts at 'party education’.

The author: Clarisse Berthezène is a scholar of political and intellectual history of Great Britain in the interwar and the immediate post-WWII eras. She is Associate professor of British civilization at the University Paris VII-Denis Diderot.