First published in 1966, The Habit of Authority looks at the continuity of paternalism and its attitudes in the face of the rising principle of democracy in Britain. It seeks to show how this continuity affected, as it still does, class and convention, polity and politics; and how power, when transferred from aristocracy to the ranks below, took its assumptions with it.

The book discusses themes like colonization of England; the Estates of the realm; English authority overseas; the dislocation of society; the survival of the ascendancy; and Bonar Law's dynasty. This is an important historical reference work for students of British history and British politics.

A. P. Thornton was an academic and historian. He was Professor of History at University College, University of Toronto.