The Discovery of Britain

Graham Robb takes readers on a time-traveling adventure around the “spindly, sea-wracked island” he calls home.

Interweaving personal and historical narratives and making use of contemporary sources, Graham Robb’s lively exploration of Britain through the ages peels back the layers of this island nation and shows how it came to be. We follow Robb as he travels along the warpaths of long-forgotten kings, under the chalk ramparts and grassy folds of ancient hill-towns, down the ghost trails of Roman and Saxon streets. Armed with poignant observations and an infectious love for his subject, Robb recounts the epic stories of wars and conquests, of feuding kings and rebellious peasants, of innovations and upheavals, from the creation of Stonehenge to the dawn of the railway, from the advent of multiculturalism to the recent political earthquakes—distilling a social, political, and geographical history of Britain that is at once panoramic and intimate, poignant and entertaining.

“A dazzling and dizzyingly wonderful roam through Britain’s past. This is history writing as you’ve never read it before."—Jack Cornish, author of The Lost Paths