This book has been planned and written as a continuation of the work begun in my Culture and Society, 1780-1950.  I described that book as 'an account and an interpretation of our reponses in thought and feeling to changes in English society since the late eighteenth century,' and this, of course, was its main fuuncttion, a critical history of ideas and values in this period of decisive chagne.  Yet the method of the book, and in particular its concluding chapter, led to a further intention: from analysing and interpreting the ideas and values I moved to an attempt to reinterpret and extend them, in terms of a still changing society and of my own experience in it

 I . . . have limited this book to what in any case I should have written about: questions in the theory of culture, historical analysis of certain cultural institutions and forms, and problems of meaning and action in our contemporary cultural situation. (ix)

My title is taken from a sentence in Culture and Society, but a further note on it might be useful.  It seems to me that we are living through a long revolution, which our best descriptions only in part interpret.  It is a genuine revolution, transforming men and institutions; continually extended and deepened by the actions of millions, continually and variously opposed by explicit reaction and by the pressure of habitual forms and ideas.  Yet it is a difficult revolution to define,a nd its uneven action is taking place over so long a period that it is almost impossible not to get lost in its exceptionally complicated process. (x)

1. democratic revolution

2. industrial revolution

3. cultural revolution