English and their History

Robert Tombs is Emeritus Professor of French History at Cambridge, and a Fellow of St John's College. Most of his writing and teaching has been on French and European history and on Franco-British relations, for which he was awarded the Palmes Académiques by the French government. Since his foray into English history, with the publication of The English and Their History in 2014, he has become a frequent commentator on contemporary issues, and is co-editor of the pro-Brexit academic website Briefings for Britain.

Writing the entire history of the English people, from start to finish, may seem a dementedly ambitious undertaking. But the Cambridge historian Robert Tombs pulls it off with penetrating wit, lovely colour and a positively Victorian swagger. Rich in anecdote as well as analysis, his book breaks with academic orthodoxy by treating England as a genuinely distinctive nation. The English have been blessed by tremendous good luck, he argues, but we also owe a great deal to our ancestors, who built some of the most enduring institutions in the world. “England,” he writes, “is a rambling old property with ancient foundations, a large Victorian extension, a 1960s garage, and some annoying leaks and draughts balancing its period charm.”