A New History

Europe

Roderick Beaton is the Emeritus Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at King's College London. He is a three-time winner of the Runciman Award, for his books George Seferis: Waiting for the Angel: A Biography, An Introduction to Modern Greek Literature, and Byron's War: Romantic Rebellion, Greek Revolution, which was also shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, and in 2019 was made a Commander of the Order of Honour of the Hellenic Republic, in recognition of his 'distinguished contribution to the study of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature'. He was knighted in 2024.

This wise, thoughtful and entertaining book draws on a lifetime of knowledge to tell the story as crisply as possible of the European continent and its people. Beginning in the Ancient World and ending with the war in Ukraine, Europe: A New History is both the story of the whole land mass and of the shifting points when a particular country or region has become dominant or extraordinary. The book is both a reliable and thoughtful guide to what has happened to this small western outcrop of the Asian landmass and a meditation on what is and what is not Europe - how this has changed but also the strange continuities. 
 
Europe: A New History is above all extraordinarily useful - Roderick Beaton is as good at writing about the great social, economic and climatic changes across the continent as on those small individual moments where suddenly history takes a new and sometimes drastic course.

Roderick Beaton

The best history of Greece around... Beautifully written and packed with insights about the culture and the people.  I will be dipping into this book for the rest of my life.

His new book - judicious, well-researched and commendably up-to-date - deserves to be the standard general history of modern Greece in English for years to come.

This book explores the history, not of a Greece of romantic or philhellenic imagination, but the reality of the country as it has become today. The empathy it evokes for the survival of modern Greek statehood against a recurring pattern of often existential crisis is all the more compelling, subtle and above all human in its many-sidedness. Beaton's account instantly becomes the single most outstanding treatment of its subject and shows us why - as Lord Palmerston expressed it succinctly for his own times - 'Greece' is an emotional word that still matters to contemporary society.

A wonderfully engaging narrative ... It is a superb achievement and to be recommended to anyone with even the most rudimentary interest

A perceptive analysis of Greece's financial crisis, the embers of which continue to threaten to derail the single currency project of the EU

Praise for Byron's War: Indispensable

Biography of a Modern Nation

We think we know ancient Greece, the civilization that shares the same name and gave us just about everything that defines 'western' culture today, in the arts, sciences, social sciences and politics. Yet, as Greece has been brought under repeated scrutiny during the financial crises that have convulsed the country since 2010, worldwide coverage has revealed just how poorly we grasp the modern nation. This book sets out to understand the modern Greeks on their own terms. 
 
How did Greece come to be so powerfully attached to the legacy of the ancients in the first place, and then to define an identity for its people that is at once Greek and modern? This book reveals the remarkable achievement, during the last 300 years, of building a modern nation on, sometimes literally, the ruins of a vanished civilization. This is the story of the Greek nation state but also, and perhaps more fundamentally, of the collective identity that goes with it. It is not only a history of events and high politics, it is also a history of culture, of the arts, of people and of ideas.

Roderick Beaton

Praise for Greece

The best history of Greece around... Beautifully written and packed with insights about the culture and the people. I will be dipping into this book for the rest of my life.

His new book - judicious, well-researched and commendably up-to-date - deserves to be the standard general history of modern Greece in English for years to come.

This book explores the history, not of a Greece of romantic or philhellenic imagination, but the reality of the country as it has become today. The empathy it evokes for the survival of modern Greek statehood agains ...

The best history of Greece around... Beautifully written and packed with insights about the culture and the people. I will be dipping into this book for the rest of my life.

His new book - judicious, well-researched and commendably up-to-date - deserves to be the standard general history of modern Greece in English for years to come.

This book explores the history, not of a Greece of romantic or philhellenic imagination, but the reality of the country as it has become today. The empathy it evokes for the survival of modern Greek statehood agains ...

The best history of Greece around... Beautifully written and packed with insights about the culture and the people. I will be dipping into this book for the rest of my life.

His new book - judicious, well-researched and commendably up-to-date - deserves to be the standard general history of modern Greece in English for years to come.

This book explores the history, not of a Greece of romantic or philhellenic imagination, but the reality of the country as it has become today. The empathy it evokes for the survival of modern Greek statehood agains ...

Books by Roderick Beaton

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter