Rule Britannia

Things fall apart when empires crumble. This time, we think, things will be different. They are not. This time, we are told, we will become great again. We will not. In this new edition of the hugely successful Rule Britannia, Danny Dorling and Sally Tomlinson argue that the vote to leave the EU was the last gasp of the old empire working its way out of the British psyche. Fuelled by a misplaced nostalgia, the result was driven by a lack of knowledge of Britain's imperial history, by a profound anxiety about Britain's status today, and by a deeply unrealistic vision of our future.

On 6 July 2005, the International Olympic Committee awarded the 2012 summer Olympic Games to the city of London, opening a new chapter in Great Britain’s rich Olympic history. Despite the prospect of hosting the summer Games for the third time since Pierre de Coubertin’s 1894 revival of the Olympic movement, the historical roots of British Olympism have received limited scholarly attention. With the conclusion of the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the passing of the baton to London, Rule Britannia remedies that oversight. This book uncovers Britain’s early Olympic involvement, revealing how the British public, media, and leading governmental officials were strongly opposed to international Olympic competition. It explores how the British Olympic Association focused on three main factors in the midst of widespread national opposition: it embraced early Olympian spectacles as a platform for maintaining a sporting union with Ireland, it fostered a greater sense of imperial identity with Britain’s white dominions, and it undertook an ambitious policy of athletic specialization designed to reverse the nation’s waning fortunes in international sport. This book was previously published as a special issue of International Journal of the History of Sport.

"The Last Imperialist: Sir Alan Burns' Epic Defense of the British Empires studies Sir Alan Burns' career and his arguments in defense of European colonialism. Bruce Gilley describes Burns' intellectual and policy battles with opponents of colonialism and his efforts to slow the decolonization process"--

Emma wakes up one morning to an apocalyptic world. The cozy existence she shares with her grandmother, an eccentric retired actress known to all as Madam, has been shattered: there's no post, no telephone, no radio - and an American warship sits in the harbor. As the two women piece together clues about the 'friendly' military occupation on their doorstep, family, friends and neighbours gather round to protect their heritage. In this chilling novel of the future, Daphne du Maurier explores the implications of a political, economic and military alliance between Britain and the United States. "A diverse and engrossing cast of characters...provocative, diverting."-Chicago Tribune

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF REBECCA In this prescient novel, Daphne du Maurier explores the implications of leaving Europe for a political, economic and military alliance with the United States. 'It is rather awful, Emma thought as she walked across the fields down to the farm, how this business is leading us all into subterfuge and deception, and we can't really tell who is friend and who is enemy . . . ' Emma wakes up one morning to an apocalyptic world. The cosy existence she shares with her grandmother, a famous retired actress, has been shattered: there's no telephone, no radio - and an American warship sits in the harbour. England has withdrawn from the European Common Market and, on the brink of bankruptcy, has decided that salvation lies in a union - political, military and economic - with the United States. Theoretically it is to be an equal partnership, but it soon begins to look like a takeover bid. As the two women piece together clues about the 'friendly' military occupation on their doorstep, family, friends and neighbours come together to resist the interlopers. The spirit of Britannia embodied - SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

The press-gang. An unmitigated evil, or the savior of a nation? You decide. Impressment was nothing new for the Royal Navy. It had been used as early as 1664 as a way of obtaining crews for warships. In many respects, impressment was inevitable. The number of trained sailors was finite, and had to be shared across both military and merchant ships. But, where the impact of an undermanned merchant fleet could be inconvenient, an undermanned navy could be disastrous. Britain was an island nation and depended on it's fleet to protect it. J. R. Hutchinson takes us on a tour of the "press-gang," the vehicle by which "eligible men of seafaring habits" were gathered into the Royal Navy. We learn, among other things, how the press-gang began, how it worked, how it was evaded, and how it was ended. While the argument can be made that the fate of the pressed man was certainly no worse, and in many ways much better, than his cousin on land; Hutchinson takes the opposite view-that it was an unmitigated evil. Whether Hutchinson is right, or guilty of analyzing 18th Century history with 20th Century standards, is for you to decide.