Open a history of Europe with “everything changed on the morning of Thursday 24th of February 2022” and you will have the undivided attention of the Twenty Four Two podcast.

Roderick Beaton’s Europe: A New History, published today by Penguin, reframes the last 2,500 years as the story of an idea. Starting with the Greek city states and Herodotus’s conjuring-up of “Europe” as the antithesis of “Asia”, he takes “Rome” all the way from the city republic via Constantinople to the demise of its namesake empire two millennia later. He examines Europe as both Christendom and competing Christianities, and covers invasions and assimilations, mass migrations, superstates and nation states all the way to the Ukrainian bulwark against Putinist “anti-Europe”.

Beaton fears that Europe in 2026 is too like the ancient Greek city states, who chose division in the face of a ruthless neighbour. “It reminds me so much of what’s in that ghastly US document that came out at the end of last year, the strategy document, where the current White House wants to see a Europe in which European states double down on their distinctive identity,” he tells Tim G. Jones on the podcast. “I mean, it’s classic divide and rule. You can see exactly why a large military power might want to see that happen. But, from the point of view of Europe … it’s a red flag. It’s an example from the past”.

Knighted in 2019, Roderick Beaton is Emeritus Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at King’s College London.

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