As a piece of fearless iconoclasm, 1688 can hardly be bettered. Moreover, having destroyed the old image of the revolution Pincus puts a new and bolder one in its place. He clearly has no time for the post-modernist reluctance to impose order on the past that is detectable in some recent accounts of the English Civil War — the mid-century revolution that did for James's father, Charles I. Nevertheless, if it's a gripping story you're after then look elsewhere. Pincus provides no sustained narrative, no character vignettes of his leading players to enliven the plot. Entertaining readers comes second to educating them. And here he uses his trademark style of massed ranks of contemporary quotations, supported by a vast array of archival references, to full effect. His quote-strewn text will be manna to other academics foraging for their own work. But the general reader may well find it harder to digest.

Pincus wants to do more than just rehabilitate the Glorious Revolution, however. He wants to exalt it as the daddy of all revolutions — a status usually reserved for its mid-century predecessor. To do so, he employs Burke's strategy — that is, by denying that the events of the 1640s and 1650s constituted a revolution at all. Proper revolutions, he claims, succeed in the long term. And proper "modern" revolutions are not motivated by religion. A defining feature of modernity for Pincus is the abandonment of religious hatreds. His Whig revolutionaries were willing to ally with Catholic powers to defeat Louis. Consequently, they were more modern than Oliver Cromwell and co. with their supposedly "early Protestant worldview". 

Unfortunately, this completely overlooks the fact that English politicians since Elizabethan times had been positively eager to join Catholics in defending Christendom against "popish" aggressors such as Spain, or later France. The Whigs' language on this score echoes that of Elizabeth's courtiers who were cosying up to anti-Spanish Catholics in the 1590s. Similarly, the modernising programme of Pincus's revolutionaries bears a close resemblance to that of Charles I's leading opponents in the early 1640s. They too wanted to beef up the state, open the church to godly Protestants and lead the fight against popery on the continent. If their revolution failed in the long term it was not because their aims were any less "modern". It was simply that they lacked what Pincus's revolutionaries were lucky enough to have-a warlike, godly prince, William of Orange — on whom to graft their reform programme.

Pincus's "first modern revolution" succeeded because it had that most ancient and exclusive component of the constitution to build upon, monarchy. It is hard to disagree with him that England was a more commercial and tolerant society in 1688 than it had been 40 years earlier. But this seems beside the point. In the words of James II's opponents in 1066 and All That, "the answer was an Orange" all along.