-8ede-f9c30eccfc18">
ISLAND STORIES
BRITAIN AND ITS HISTORY
IN THE AGE OF BREXIT
David Reynolds
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2019
Copyright © David Reynolds 2019
Front cover photograph © Martin Parr/Magnum Photos
David Reynolds asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins
Source ISBN: 9780008282318
Ebook Edition © October 2019 ISBN: 9780008282332
Version: 2019-09-13
We have got all we want in territory, and our claim to be left in the unmolested enjoyment of vast and splendid possessions, mainly acquired by violence, largely maintained by force, often seems less reasonable to others than to us.
Winston Churchill, 10 January 1914
Trade cannot flourish without security.
Lord Palmerston, 22 April 1860
Unless we change our ways and our direction, our greatness as a nation will soon be a footnote in the history books, a distant memory of an offshore island, lost in the mists of time, like Camelot, remembered kindly for its noble past.
Margaret Thatcher, 1 May 1979
Vote Leave. Take Back Control.
Brexit campaign slogan, 2016
Contents
Copyright
Epigraph
List of illustrations
Introduction: Brexit Means …?
1. Decline
2. Europe
3. Britain
4. Empire
5. Taking Control of Our Past
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by David Reynolds
About the Publisher
1. ‘Brexit means …’ © Christian Adams (Tim Benson, The Political Cartoon Gallery)
2. ‘Bull and his burdens’, John Tenniel © Punch, 8 February 1879, Vol 76
4. ‘Er, could I be the hind legs, please?’ © Vicky/Victor Weisz, Evening Standard, 6 December 1962
5. ‘The Double Deliverance’ (1621). © The Trustees of the British Museum.
6. ‘Very Well, Alone’. © David Low, Evening Standard, 18 June 1940.
7. ‘Come on in! Vite! The water’s wunderbar.’ © Cummings, Daily Express, 28 June 1989
8. ‘The United Kingdom: Liberate Scotland now …’ © Lindsay Foyle, 15 January 2012
10. ‘Massacre at Drogheda’ from Mary Frances Cusack, An Illustrated History of Ireland (1868)
12. ‘Windrush Betrayal’. © Patrick Blower/Telegraph Media Group Ltd, Daily Telegraph, 18 April 2018
13. ‘The Aliens Act at Work’ (1906). © Jewish History Museum, London
14. ‘We need migrants …’ © Matt Pritchett/Telegraph Media Group Ltd, Daily Telegraph, 30 June 2017
15. ‘It’ll whisk you back to the sepia-tinted 1950s’. © Kipper Williams, In or Out of Europe (2016).
16. ‘Remainers Ahead’, © Grizelda, New Statesman, 13 April 2018
17. ‘Free at Last’ © Patrick Chappatte, New York Times, 23 June 2016.