Boyd Hilton teaches modern British history at Cambridge and is a fellow of Trinity College. He is the author of Corn, Cash and Commerce: The Economic Policies of the Tory Government 1815-30 and of The Age of Atonement.
Everybody agrees mat the British, and especially the English, are suffering from an identity crisis. The standard explanation is loss of Empire and failure to find an alternative role. And yet in many ways it was the Empire which sowed the seeds of our present uncertainties.
What is ‘national history’, and what is it for? Who and what should be included in it? And where does it take place? For all that it may appear to offer a uniquely intelligible...
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