Britons

Linda Colley

In this splendidly wide-ranging and compelling book, Linda Colley recounts how a new British nation was invented in the wake of the Act of Union between England and Wales and Scotland in 1707. She describes how a succession of major wars with Catholic France - culminating in the epic conflict with Napoleon - served as both a threat and a tonic, forcing the diverse peoples of this deeply Protestant culture into closer union and reminding them of what they had in common. She shows how the world-wide empire, which was the prize of so much successful warfare, gave men and women from different ethnic and social backgrounds a powerful incentive to be British. In the process, she not only demonstrates how an overarching British identity came to be superimposed on to much older regional and national identities, but she also illumines why it is that these same older identities - be it...