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

Praise for David Reynolds’ The Long Shadow

‘Reynolds is able to speak with authority on economics and philosophy; literature and art; politics, diplomacy and memory. He is a historian of immense skill, utterly confident of his wisdom and deservedly so.’ Gerard De Groot

‘An extraordinary work.’ Peter Stansky, Stanford University

‘[A] masterly look at what the war meant and how its meaning changed by decade.’ David Shribman

‘Offers correctives to many popular delusions. Perspective is critical to a comprehension of history, and Reynolds has no peer in helping us to achieve this.’ Max Hastings

‘A masterly study in every sense: by an historian at the top of his game, deploying wide-ranging research in important arguments, sustained alike with rich detail and with dry wit.’ Peter Clarke

‘Fascinating.’ Andrew Roberts

‘Brilliant ... the most challenging and intelligent book on the Great War and our perceptions of it that any of us will read this, or any other year.’ John Charmley

‘A fluent corrective to our preoccupation with our own individual and family war stories . . . offers a truly global perspective on the conflict's long shadow.’ Nigel Jones

‘Who better as remembrancer than David Reynolds, with his customary lucidity, his long view, his comparative perspective, his contemporary sensitivity, his scholarly sanity and his crisp humanity? ... This is the work of a master historian.’ Alex Danchev

‘Transcends conventional histories about World War I ... The kind of book that challenges readers to think.’ Ed Timms

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 heritage industry, from the ‘Channel’ to the ‘special relationship’, from India to the ‘English problem’. He examines how other critical turning points have forged our history, including the Act of Union with Scotland and the political mishandling of post-1945 immigration. Island Stories also looks carefully across the Irish Sea, noting – as Brexit has shown again – that Ireland is the ‘other island’ the English have always been dangerously happy to forget.

Island Stories leads us on an exciting journey through history, investigating how Britain’s sense of national identity has been shaped and contested, and how that saga has brought us to the era of Brexit. Combining sharp historical analysis with vivid human stories, this is big history with a light touch that will challenge and entertain anyone interested in where Britain has come from and where it is heading.