Product Review

For decades, scholars have been urging a "four nations" approach to British history. Susan Kingsley Kent's ambitious and timely A New History of Britain since 1688: Four Nations and an Empire finally delivers on that promise. Ranging from 1688 to the present, the book covers developments in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, along with the British empire, providing a lively and often gripping account of the ever-changing conflicts that have characterized British history. In prose that is accessible and engaging, Kent not only includes the histories of the four "nations" of the British Isles and the vast overseas empire within a single frame, she also seamlessly interweaves the thematic concerns of her previous scholarship--gender history, environmental history, and imperial and colonial history--into the history of British politics, society, and imperial culture. The result is a brilliant synthesis.