It was a pleasure, earlier today, to speak to Jeremy Black, professor of history at the University of Exeter, about his new book, Britain and Europe: A Short History (Hurst, 2018). Jeremy is one of the best-known and certainly the most prolific of British historians, and his new book demonstrates both his extraordinary range and his compelling arguments. Beginning in the iron age and concluding in the present, Britain and Europe traces relationships between territories and cultures that change and conflict even as they participate in the construction of each other. The current debate about Brexit has shown how important historical arguments can be in public discourse, as well as how frequently these historical arguments can be abused. Grand in scope, and always accessible, Britain and Europe challenges lazy political appropriations of a difficult and rewarding past.

Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast. His research interests focus on the history of puritanism and evangelicalism, and he is the author most recently of John Owen and English Puritanism (Oxford University Press, 2016).

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