Island Stories - Unravelling Britain (v. 2) (Theatres of Memory) - Hardcover

"A magnificent and irreplaceable collection"--John Gray, "New Statesman" "A provocative lens into both the remote and the near British past."--"Publishers Weekly" "A rich fund of subversive ideas."--Daniel Johnson, "The Times" "A stunning collection ... humane, optimistic, multi-textures, ever-meandering but always sparkling ... one of the finest and- paradoxically--most quintessentially English historians of our time."--Ben Pilmot, "Independent on Sunday" "Deeply researched, intelligently argued, lovingly presented, thoroughly excitable and immensely stimulating ... [Samuel is] as comfortable with seventeenth-century sectarians as with Victorian nonconformists, as familiar with the townlands of Ireland as the streets of London."--John Gillis, "Left History" "One of the most outstanding, original intellectuals of his generation: a passionate, creative and innovative social historian and a man of unique personal qualities and distinction of mind and spirit."--Stuart Hall, "New Left Review" "Provocative, original ... a powerful testimony to the unending dialogue between the present and the past that is the essence excitement of history."--David Cannadine, "Observer" "Raphael Samuel gave new meaning to the idea of history ... He brought to the writing and popularisation of history a seemingly inexhaustible energy and creativity."--Gareth Stedman Jones, "Independent" "Samuel was born to be an historian. He had the vital quality of living at the same time in the past, the present and the future. Everything interested him, from public health to colonial rebellion and from street lighting to street fighting."--"Times" "The sheer scope and erudition of these pages is stunning ... an imaginative tour de force."--Terry Eagleton, "Guardian"

This work offers an account of the heroes and villains, legends and foibles of the four nations that inhabit the British Isles. Raphael Samuel is interested by the face that traditions can disappear no less abruptly than they were invented. How is it, he asks, that the Scots have lost interest in a British narrative of which they were once a central protagonist? Why is the celebration of "Britons" thriving today just as its object has become problematic? The book conveys the mutability of national conceits. Samuels calls as witness numerous authorities - Bede and Gerald of Barri, Macaulay and Stubbs, Shakespeare and Dickens, Lord Reith and Raymond Williams, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Benn - each of whom sought to renew the sense of national identity by means of an acute sense of the past. A sequel to "Theatres of Memory", the book is a study of the way nations use their past to lend meaning to the present and future.