Island Stories: Britain and Its History in the Age of Brexit

What does Brexit mean to you? For award-winning historian David Reynolds, it’s neither a saga of British liberation nor a Westminster soap: it’s a crisis of national identity a long time in the making. Politicians like to extol ‘our island story’ as if there is just one island and one story. Island Stories takes a broader view, exploring the history of Britain’s identity through the great defining narratives of its past, from rise and decline to engagement in Europe and the legacies of empire. This is a book that resets our perspective on Britain and its place in the world. Traversing the centuries, Reynolds sheds fresh light on topics ranging from the slave trade to the …