This essay analyses the pertinence of the concept of "ancien régime" as referred to English society and institutions and, correspondingly, asks if the case of eighteenth-century England can be understood in the context of the concept of "general crisis of the ancien régime" in Europe in the second half of the eighteenth century. It accepts the validity of such an interpretive perspective, but at the same time it underlines on which peculiar basis it can be applied to the British case. This problem is explored on the basis of the most recent inetrnational historiography on the development of the English State, of British institutions, of British society and of British public opinion in the post-1763 era and in coincidence with the American crisis, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars
