A critical history of sociology in Britain. A.H. Halsey presents an authoritative picture of the neglect, expansion, fragmentation and explosion of the discipline over the 21st century. The story begins with L.T. Hobhouse's election to the first Chair in Sociology in London in 1907, but traces earlier origins of the discipline to Scotland and the English provinces. There is a lively account of the 19th-century battles between literature and science for the possession of the third culture of social studies, setting the context for a narrative history of rapid expansion in the second half of the 20th century.