Rule, Nostalgia: A Backwards History of Britain (Hardback) - Hannah Rose Woods Book

* CHOSEN AS A BOOK TO WATCH IN 2022 BY THE NEW STATESMAN AND IRISH TIMES * 'Rule, Nostalgia announces Woods as one of the most interesting new historians of her generation' - Dan Jones, Sunday Times 'Well-argued, timely and hugely entertaining' - Jonathan Coe, bestselling author of Middle England 'Our national story is so much stranger than we think: this book brilliantly insists that we look at it afresh' - James Hawes, bestselling author of The Shortest History of England Britain is an island ruled by nostalgia, but nostalgia today isn't what it used to be... Longing to go back to the 'good old days' is nothing new. For hundreds of years, the British have mourned the loss of older national identities and called for a revival 'simple', 'better' ways of life - from Margaret Thatcher's call for a return to 'Victorian values' in the 1980s, to William Blake's protest against the 'dark satanic mills' of the Industrial Revolution that were fast transforming England's green and pleasant land