The Discovery of Britain

Filled with curiosities … Ambitious, with a tinge of eccentricity and perfectly grown-up enough to sustain the occasional disagreement, this is a rich pleasure of a book. – Philip Hensher * The Spectator *Robb tumbles into British history with an infectious enthusiasm … immensely entertaining – Chris Bryant, author of The Glamour BoysRemarkable … a book as much about the experience of history as history itself … Learned and likeable. * The Sunday Times *Meticulous, contrary … Robb has the superb ability of taking a single off-kilter subject and widening it out to illuminate something much larger. * Shortlist *A dazzling and dizzyingly wonderful roam through Britain’s past. This is history writing as you’ve never read it before – enchanting and truly exciting.’ – Jack Cornish, author of The Lost PathsEngagingly rediscovers Britain’s past in unexpected ways, melding memory and observation with history and geography. – Brian Groom, author of Made in ManchesterA history where everything is somehow still present and all at once, colourful and jostling along, like a tapestry that draws you close. – Garrett Carr, author of The Boy from the Sea

Graham Robb was born in Manchester in 1958 and is a former fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. He has published widely on French literature and history. His book The Discovery of France won both the Duff Cooper and Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prizes. For Parisians, the City of Paris awarded him the Grande Médaille de la Ville de Paris. He lives on the English-Scottish border. The Discovery of Britain is his tenth book.