Biography of a Modern Nation

Greece

SHORTLISTED FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE 2020 AND THE RUNCIMAN AWARD 2021 
 
A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 
 
'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' Victoria Hislop 
 
We think we know ancient Greece, the civilisation 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 define an identity for themselves 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 civilisation. 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.

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

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'.

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

A magisterial history, written with great panache, that is both enlightening and deeply readable. A true tour de force

Europe is big history at its best. In this captivating romp across twenty-five centuries, from the Battle of Marathon to Putin’s war on Ukraine, Roderick Beaton offers inspiring and surprising answers to one of the great questions of our age: What is Europe?

Ian Morris, author of Why the West Rules—For Now

Praise for Roderick Beaton's previous book Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation

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

Beaton's 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

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

A New History

What do we talk about when we talk about Europe? Is it defined by geography? Or is it politics, or shared culture? In Europe, award-winning historian Roderick Beaton tells the story of Europe as never before - as the history of an idea, and a collective identity. 
 
Since its dramatic birth in ancient Greece, 'Europe' has been defined, and redefined, by its people. Through this powerful lens, and with the narrative drive and scope of a novelist, Beaton deftly surveys Europe’s major historical developments: the rise and fall of Rome; the explosion of Christianity; the intellectual ferment of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment; the arrival of Europeans in the Americas; the violent upheavals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and the uncertainties of the present. Throughout, original sources allow the voices of the past, from Tacitus to Thatcher, to speak for themselves. 
 
Grappling with the multilayered identities that have always come with being European, Europe places the Europe of today in a long arc of history stretching back more than 2,500 years.

Roderick Beaton

Praise for Europe

A magisterial history, written with great panache, that is both enlightening and deeply readable. A true tour de force

Europe is big history at its best. In this captivating romp across twenty-five centuries, from the Battle of Marathon to Putin’s war on Ukraine, Roderick Beaton offers inspiring and surprising answers to one ...

Praise for Roderick Beaton's previous book Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation

A magisterial history, written with great panache, that is both enlightening and deeply readable. A true tour de force

Europe is big history at its best. In this captivating romp across twenty-five centuries, from the Battle of Marathon to Putin’s war on Ukraine, Roderick Beaton offers inspiring and surprising answers to one ...

Praise for Roderick Beaton's previous book Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation

A magisterial history, written with great panache, that is both enlightening and deeply readable. A true tour de force

Europe is big history at its best. In this captivating romp across twenty-five centuries, from the Battle of Marathon to Putin’s war on Ukraine, Roderick Beaton offers inspiring and surprising answers to one ...

Praise for Roderick Beaton's previous book Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation

Books by Roderick Beaton

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