Roman soldiers, garrisoned on Hadrian’s Wall in the second century AD, referred to their enemies as “Brittunculi”, or “filthy little Britons”. But the Britannia that they guarded would be but the first iteration of a nation that has long outlasted them, reinventing itself, or being reinvented, countless times ever since.
In 878, arguably, “Britain” was reduced to King Alfred and his followers, hiding from the Vikings on the Isle of Athelney, in the Somerset marshes. By the twelfth century it was part of Henry II’s Angevin empire, which included Anjou, Aquitaine, Brittany and Normandy, as well as territory in Ireland. At the apogee of the British Empire, after the First World War, territories that formerly belonged to Germany and the Ottoman empire were added to its already swollen list of dominions. The borders of Britain, its constituent states and overseas possessions, have always waxed and waned.
That, at least, is the driving argument behind Small Island, a book written in the shadow of Brexit and aimed at countering the idea that the present political moment represents some kind of crisis of nationhood. Its author, Philip Parker, is confident that those who voted for Brexit voted not for change, but for a return to the comforting security of a mythic British past defined by, among other things, strong, clear national borders. He does not believe such a return is possible: Britain’s borders, as much as its identity, have always been fluid. Britain’s story is a “long journey of formation, expansion, contraction and reinvention”.
In pursuit of this argument Parker has written an impressively concise, lucid but flawed account of British history. Small Island is highly Anglocentric. Although there are passing references to the other nations in this archipelago throughout, the histories of Wales, Scotland and Ireland are largely confined to a single chapter, sandwiched between those on medieval England and Tudor Britain.
Ireland comes off particularly badly, receiving a scant four pages in the chapter. But then the presence of Ireland in a book about the history of Britain would seem a test case for Parker’s thesis: what does it mean to say that Ireland, never geographically part of Britain, was once British? The shifting nature and meanings of political boundaries and cultural identities – and how they were understood contemporaneously – remain unexplored.
Elsewhere the Anglocentrism leads to some unfortunate emphases. Cartimandua, first-century queen of the Brigantes, a Celtic tribe in what is now Yorkshire, merits two paragraphs. Britain’s entire involvement in sub-Saharan Africa in the nineteenth century merits one.
Because the book’s focus is territorial, the narrative emphasis skews towards military encounters. The consequent roll call of battle dates gives the narrative a somewhat old-fashioned historical tone that obscures the significance of the ever-changing borders. There are also some signs of haste in the book’s production. There are, for example, thirteen maps, not twelve as the subtitle promises. Two of the maps, those for “Celtic Britain” and “Roman Britain”, have been transposed. The map for “Britain in the European Union, 2015” identifies every country in the EU save for Ireland, giving the unfortunate impression that it was then part of the United Kingdom.
Minor errors are inevitable in a book so rich in information, but more should have been caught in the copy editing. For example, Charles II was declared king of Scotland in 1649, not 1648. The French Revolution saw the execution of Louis XVI, not Louis XIV. English involvement in the transatlantic slave trade doesn’t begin in 1660, but dates as least as far back as John Hawkins in 1562. Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee was in 1897, not 1896. Sinn Féin was founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith, not in 1908 by Arthur Griffin. The Bolshevik Revolution began in 1917, not 1918. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, not 2021.
These caveats notwithstanding, Small Island is an engaging and enjoyable dash through English history. Philip Parker is surely right that, from whatever political perspective you view England or Britain’s place in the world, a clear-sighted acknowledgment of its changing historical identity is the best place to start.
This review first appeared in the 16 December 2022 issue of the Times Literary Supplement.
Mathew Lyons 
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