Britain and Europe during the 'Age of Extremes': A Conversation with Historians

Dr Lindsay Aqui (Cambridge), Dr Eirini Karamouzi (Sheffield), Harry Taylor (Sheffield Hallam)
Chaired by Jessica Thorne (Royal Holloway, University of London)

19 March, 4pm, University of Westminster, Regent Street Building (Room 257).

From Britain’s response to the Spanish Civil War to the 1975 UK referendum – Britain and Europe during the 'Age of Extremes’ brings together historians to help understand our current political turmoil. As we lurch towards a ‘post-Brexit’ Britain, history, or a version of it, has collided with the shifty terrain of cultural memory. The result of this collision has resulted in a particular reading of the past, that Britain (and its Empire) has been proudly independent, and that during its ‘finest hour’, Britain ‘stood alone’.  Just as the continent has become the symbolic focus for a whole nexus of anxieties and discontent, understanding Britain’s new role in Europe has often been cast by a romanticised backwards gaze. From the 1930s to the much-mythologised 1970s, the historians participating in this workshop will offer a challenge to these ‘presentist’ readings by drawing upon their own research on Britain’s relationship with Europe.