Untied Kingdom: A Global History of the End of Britain

Description

How did Britain cease to be global? In Untied Kingdom, Stuart Ward tells the panoramic history of the end of Britain, tracing the ways in which Britishness has been imagined, experienced, disputed and ultimately discarded across the globe since the end of the Second World War. From Indian independence, West Indian immigration and African decolonization to the Suez Crisis and the Falklands War, he uncovers the demise of Britishness as a global civic idea and its impact on communities across the globe. He also shows the consequences of this diminished 'global reach' in Britain itself, from the Troubles in Northern Ireland to resurgent Englishness and the startling success of separatist political agendas in Scotland and Wales. Untied Kingdom puts the contemporary travails of the Union for the first time in their full global perspective as part of the much larger story of the progressive rollback of Britain's imaginative frontiers.

Stuart Ward is a historian of modern Britain and the British Empire at the Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen. Originally from Australia, his career has spanned appointments in Italy, the UK, Ireland and Denmark, including visiting fellowships at the Australian National University, the University of Exeter and the University of Greenland. His previous publications include The Unknown Nation (2010), shortlisted for the Australian Prime Minister's History Prize. He was awarded the Royal Historical Society's Scottish History Prize (2014) for his work on the SNP at empire's end.

'This new history of the transformation of Britain's place in the world casts the Union's contemporary crisis in a whole new light by uncovering the long-term demise of British allegiances around the world, and forging connections between the end of empire and the break-up of Britain.' The Bookseller