Small Island:
12 Maps that Explain the History of Britain
Available in hardback and Kindle formats from:
Britain is a country built on myth, from Boudicca’s revolt against the Romans to Alfred the Great’s unlikely victory against the Danish Vikings, from Henry V’s victory at Agincourt to Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar, each portrays Britain as standing alone, without allies – an island nation.
Yet has Britain ever really stood alone, has it ever been a world unto itself, has it indeed always been an island? For over 350 years Britain was the military colony of a foreign power – the Roman Empire. Following a series of Anglo-Saxon, Viking and Norman invasions, England was part of a cross-Channel empire in which its destiny might have been as one half of an Anglo-French realm. Ruled by Norman, Welsh, Scottish and German kings, England, and then Britain has always been an amalgam, a complex and intricate interplay of disparate parts. And when consumed by bouts of internal strife or introspection, Britain has made itself vulnerable to other, more determined powers – a lesson as important in a post-Brexit world as it was during the English Civil War,
Through the ages, “Britain” has grown from a set of tiny chiefdoms to a world-spanning empire and now a nation in search of a new role in a post-industrial world. Each change to Britain’s borders in that time has transformed the identity and self-image of the British. By understanding these twelve crucial maps from the last 2,000 years of British history, Small Island puts into sharp focus the challenges that have faced the nation through the ages and the inescapable fact that change is the constant thread of history and that, inevitably, the nature, and perhaps the extent, of those borders may be about to change once more.
“Charting the formation and then break-up of British rule, Small Island provides a richly entertaining canter through the country’s past. An engrossing book, offering stimulating observations about our cultural evolution as well as predictions for Britain’s future.”
The Independent
- Britain before Britain
- Britain in the Roman Empire
- Anglo-Saxon England
- Viking Britain
- Medieval England
- Wales, Scotland and Ireland
- Tudor Britain
- Stuart and Hanoverian Britain
- Imperial Britain
- Modern Britain
- The Future of Britain
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Philip Parker has always been passionate about history. A former diplomat and publisher, his first book The Empire Stops Here took him on an epic journey around the frontier provinces of the Roman empire, visiting sites from Hadrian’s Wall to the desert outpost at Lambaesis in Algeria. His critically acclaimed book, The Northmen’s Fury, is a lively and penetrating reassessment of a people who terrorized Europe for three centuries, but brought with them a rich but misunderstood culture.