Dimensions
152 x 235 x 60mm
As the public debate about Britishness grows ever more strident, Norman Davies has written a radical history of the "British Isles" including Ireland. It examines their history less from the standpoint of an insider than that of an outsider looking in.
'The Isles: A History' is a revolutionary work which repeatedly connects offshore developments with parallel events on the Continent. The Celtic Supremacy in the last centuries BC is presented in the light of a Celtic world stretching all the way from Iberia to Asia Minor. Roman Britain (which covered less than half of the British Isles) is seen not as a unique or insular phenomenon but is compared to the other frontier regions of the Roman Empire, such as Germany. The Viking Age is viewed not only through the eyes of the invaded but from the standpoint of the invaders themselves - Norse, Danes, and Normans.
Plantagenet England is seen, like the kingdom of Jerusalem, as an extension of medieval France. The purpose of this "integrationist" approach is to challenge the traditional nationalist picture of "eternal England" - a unique country formed at an early date by Anglo-Saxon kings which evolved in isolation and, except for the Norman Conquest, was only marginally affected by Continental affairs.
Instead, a new picture of the Isles emerges, one of four countries - England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales - constantly buffeted by Continental storms and repeatedly transformed by them. The result is a richly layered historical legacy where Celtic, Roman, Germanic, Norse, Norman, and Angevin traditions interrelate long after the period of their ascendancies.
In the later chapters, Norman Davies follows the construction of the United Kingdom from the Personal Union of Crowns in 1603 to the Acts of Union of 1707 and 1800 and then charts the rise and fall of the main pillars of "Britishness" - the Royal Navy, the Protestant Ascendancy, the Constitutional Monarchy, the aristocracy, the Protestant Supremacy, the British Empire, the imperial economy and sterling area, and the monopoly of English. The book ends with the crisis that is confronting Britain now, in the face of the "ever closer" European Union.
Written with clarity, 'The Isles: A History' is set to force a reassessment of what it means to be British. It will become an agenda-setting book on ideas of national identity and sovereignty. It should be read by anyone with an interest in the history of "these islands", from schoolchild and student to Cabinet Minister and Queen.
