Fiction and Faction in Canada's Great Coalition of 1864 was published by the Centre for Canadian Studies at Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick in 1993, and based on the 1991 Winthrop Pickard Bell Lecture in Canadian Studies. In it I challenged the conventional textbook of the circumstances and motives that brought Canadian politicians together to work for a union of the provinces in 1864. In particular I argued that the Great Coalition could not be understood without appreciating that the province faced, not "deadlock" but an internal sectional upheaval, and that its members united not on the basis of a single programme to unite the whole of British North America, but rather behind two alternative, overlapping but rival schemes of constitutional change.

Sir Fulque Agnew of Lochnaw was an idealist who decided in 1947 to seek work in India as the sub-continent made its transition to independence. Shortly before her death in 2000, his widow, known in academic circles as the historical geographer Swanzie Agnew, invited me to edit the letters he wrote to her during his travels. The edition was published by Edinburgh University's Centre for South Asian Studies and the text is reproduced here by permission of the copyright holder, Sir Crispin Agnew of Lochnaw Bt, whose support for the project throughout is gratefully acknowledged.

This two-part essay began with a belief that it would be in keeping with the international mandate of the University of Edinburgh to mark the centenary of Australian federation with a public lecture from Scotland. When the University decided to charge for a lecture room, the event was held in the hospitable surroundings of the Royal OverSeas League on Princes Street, on 14 December 2000. From the distant and neutral perspective of Scotland, the lecture argued that it was impossible to account for the coming of federation in Australia without also explaining why New Zealand stood aloof. A revised version was published by the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies at king's College London in 2001. The origin of the project will explain (if not excuse) two features: its allusions to Scotland, and its concentration on surveying earlier research, since some of the Centennial literature had not then reached me.

Neither his biographers nor political historians have much to say about John A. Macdonald's brief period as head of the government in the pre-Confederation province of Canada. He was not wholly responsible for the lack-lustre performance of his ministry, but the experience was certainly no pointer to his later dominance. This article appeared in British Journal of Canadian Studies, xvi (2001), xx (2007), pp. 99-122. I am grateful to Liverpool University Press, which now publishes the BJCS, for permission to reproduce the article here.

Sir John A. Macdonald (1815-91) was first prime minister of the Dominion of Canada. This review article was published in British Journal of Canadian Studies, xvi (2001), pp. 300-19.

The Cambridge Union and Ireland 1815-1914 (Edinburgh, Ann Barry, 2000) began with the intention of producing a working paper about the Irish debates of England's oldest student debating society. It grew into a wider project ─ a history of the Union itself, and an examination of the relationship between debates and that elusive concept, "opinion". But none of this made much sense without placing the Union in its context of a privileged and traditional university.

Published in British Journal of Canadian Studies, xvii (2004)

Published in British Review of New Zealand Studies, xv (2005/6).

This paper was given as a keynote address at the University of Edinburgh Centre of Canadian Studies annual conference in 1999 which examined the extent to which the year 1849 could be considered as a landmark in the history of British North America. It was published in Derek Pollard and Ged Martin, eds, Canada 1849 (Edinburgh, 2001).

A review article on the causes of Australian Federation, originally published in the UK journal Australian Studies.

This paper was published in Gabriel Doherty & Dermot Keogh, eds, De Valera’s Irelands (Cork, 2003).