As Stanley Payne observed in a grumpy footnote to his A History of Fascism, 1914–1945 (1995), “The volume of literature on the BUF [British Union of Fascists] is inversely proportionate to the group's significance” (305). It is refreshing, therefore, to read a book on the interwar radical right in Britain that is not obsessed by fascism. Bernhard Dietz shows the importance of anti-liberal and anti-parliamentary thinking on the right, which flirted with fascism, but which in many ways was distinct from it. Fascism was a little too vulgar for many upper-class Tories. “I agreed with about half he said,” wrote the radical Tory Charles Petrie in 1934 after seeing British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley at the Albert Hall, “but the whole thing was very cheap, and went against the grain to me” (22). The journalist and publisher Cecil Roberts went even further after hearing the secretary of the British Union of Fascists speak: “I don't like Baldwin or Ramsay but damn it all, I'm an Englishman. Who the hell is that reptile anyhow?” (156). Works have often overestimated the role of fascism in Britain in order to provide a counterweight to rather smug arguments about the strength of the British parliamentary system. Dietz convincingly shows, however, that the weakness of fascism did not necessarily mean the weakness of anti-liberal thinking in other respects. Writers such as Douglas Jerrold and Charles Petrie criticized liberal democracy in a distinct and original way. In making this argument, however, Dietz perhaps overestimates the extent to which the thinkers he examines are part of a unified movement. The “neo-Tories” of the book's title has much to recommend it as a label for many of these characters, but it is important to remember that it was not a self-description. At times Dietz's argument takes on an artificial coherence. There is a huge difference, for example, between the radical Catholic Toryism of Jerrold and Petrie (the most important figures in Dietz's account) and the eugenic and racist arguments of a figure like Anthony Ludovici. Dietz is alive to these differences to an extent, but the fact that such figures interacted socially does not necessarily mean they were part of the same movement. Labeling a number of different people as “neo-Tories” may obscure the important differences between them while potentially underplaying their similarities with more moderate Conservatives. What, in other words, are the boundaries of Dietz's neo-Tory group other than the ones Dietz imposes retrospectively?

Roman Catholicism could have been explored more fully as the motivating factor behind many of these figures, particularly as it seems to explain both their seeming isolation from mainstream British political discourse and their similarities with figures elsewhere in Europe. “They seem just like other people,” says Charles Ryder of English Catholics in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited (1945). “My dear Charles,” replies his friend Sebastian, himself a Catholic, “that's exactly what they're not—particularly in this country where they're so few.” Religion might also be the key difference between Jerrold and Petrie on the one hand, for whom Catholicism was central to their vision; and Ludovici and Yeats-Brown on the other, who cared less about spiritual matters. Dietz does mention these differences but is always at pains to stress the similarities. Take this claim, for example: “But even the Catholic Neo-Tories saw British society as degenerate, although they understood the decline not in racial terms but as an interim endpoint in the history of liberal-materialist decay” (67). This is true, but one could connect any number of declinist arguments in this way. Empire, too, seems to be a theme that Dietz finds it difficult to articulate because of the differences among the figures he has chosen: it is largely irrelevant to the Catholic Right (Jerrold and Petrie rarely wrote on imperial themes) but much more important to Yeats-Brown and others. Without the need to impose an artificial coherence, Dietz's excellent section on the imperial diehards might have fitted better into an overall narrative. Nevertheless, Dietz usefully reminds us that the empire was much less important to many on the radical right in Britain than is sometimes assumed. The “cult of the Empire,” as Dietz describes it, had a “secular, even pragmatic character” (208) that did not always lend itself to romantic myth making.

These reservations aside, readers will enjoy the sophistication and care with which Dietz outlines all the various arguments on the right of British politics in this period. Dietz's use of the private papers of Charles Petrie brings to life a neglected but important and little-studied figure. His work on Jerrold, too, is outstanding. Dietz also illuminates intellectual links and comparisons with the rest of the European right, including the reception of thinkers like Charles Maurras and Oswald Spengler in Tory literary circles. Based on his painstaking primary research, he weaves together one of the fullest accounts we have of the varieties of corporatist, eugenicist, ruralist and anti-parliamentary thinking in this period. Dietz's book is also genuinely pathbreaking in its discussion of the practical attempts these Tories took to gain real political influence and power. Many of these initiatives have been glossed over in previous literature on the subject. For instance, this book contains the best and fullest account yet available on the attempt to oust Stanley Baldwin and replace him with Lord Lloyd in 1933. Dietz also shows that the January Club and the British Movement were not sideshows to the British Union of Fascists but initiatives in their own right. He also provides an impeccably researched account of Jerrold's role in organizing the plane that took Francisco Franco to Morocco at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

Despite the questionable group identity and retrospective coherence suggested by the term “neo-Tories,” therefore, this book is one of the best accounts out there of the complexities of right-wing thinking in this period. The fascist movement may have been weak in Britain, but anti-liberal and anti-parliamentary thinking was much more widespread than has been hitherto assumed.