The article explores the problem of the comparative nature of English society, institutions and politics with respect to continental Europe during the "long eighteenth century". It discusses the most relevant recent historiography on the subject with special reference to the question of a "British exceptionalism". It propounds an interpretation of the characters and dynamic of the political and institutional evolution of Great Britain between late eighteenth and early nineteenth century from which it appears in which particular sense it is possible to talk of an "old regime society" and of its "crisis" in Britain with respect to the rest of Europe, particularly in its continental areas.
