Pat Thane. Old Age in English History: Past Experiences, Present Issues.Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000. 536 pp. £25.00 ISBN 0-19-820382-9.

John Macnicol. The Politics of Retirement in Britain, 1878-1948.Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998. 425 pp, £47.50, ISBN 0-52162273- 5.

Research on the history of old age has been an important area of scholarshipin gerontology over the past two decades. From the impetus provided byLaslett's work in the 1960s and 1970s, historical research had opened out bythe 1980s into what Stearns and Van Tassel viewed as a ‘promising andprovocative subfield of social history’ (1986: ix).