Entertaining and cogently argued... an eloquent argument -- Tony Barber Financial Times A dazzling perspective on the current EU referendum debate Prospect Magazine Like all truly stimulating and original works, this is a book worth reading even if one ultimately disagrees with the author's conclusions, or if the time is not yet ripe for their realisation -- Robert Gerwarth Irish Times Entertaining -- Dominic Sandbrook The Times With supreme confidence, Simms distils 1,000 years of history into a simple constant: Britain's role has always been to prevent the domination of the Continent by a single power...Britain, in other words, has always been part of Europe. To deny that fact is to ignore the past. -- Gerard Degroot The Times In his spirited new book, "Britain's Europe", Brendan Simms, a historian at Cambridge University, argues that the whole notion of an island story is wrong. Britain's history, he says, is above all about continental Europe...Mr Simms makes a powerful case. The Economist His book aims to demonstrate that the history of the British isles has never been an isolated one, and that "our island story" has always, in -reality, been continental. -- Mark Mazower New Statesman A fascinating, engaging book, which exemplifies how a balanced and mature long-term historical perspective might have informed present-day political policy -- Joad Raymond BBC History Magazine

Brendan Simms is the author of Unfinest Hour (shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize), Three Victories and a Defeat, Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy and The Longest Afternoon, which was published in 2014. He is Professor of the History of International Relations at the University of Cambridge.