This Sovereign Isle: Britain In and Out of Europe

Geography comes earlier than historical past. Islands can not have the identical historical past as continental plains. The UK is a European nation, however not the identical type of European nation as Germany, Poland or Hungary. For a lot of the 150 centuries throughout which Britain has been inhabited it has been on the sting, culturally and actually, of mainland Europe. On this succinct e-book, Tombs exhibits that the choice to go away the EU is traditionally explicable – although not made traditionally inevitable – by Britain’s very totally different historic expertise, particularly within the twentieth century, and due to our extra in depth and deeper ties outdoors Europe. He challenges the orthodox view that Brexit was due solely to British or English exceptionalism: in selecting to go away the EU, the British, he argues, have been in some ways voting as typical Europeans.