Books on Brexit: Robert Tombs

The UK in a Changing Europe

‘Books on Brexit’ is a podcast for anyone interested in the UK and the EU. Our guest authors represent a range of views on how we got here, and future prospects for the UK and UK-EU relations. They include: Michel Barnier, Philip Cunliffe, Stefaan De Rynck, Peter Foster, Brigid Laffan, Mary C. Murphy and Jonathan Evershed, and Robert Tombs. Robert Tombs, Emeritus Professor of French History and Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, is author of 'This Sovereign Isle: Britain In and Out of Europe', published by Allen Lane. In this succinct book, Robert Tombs shows that the decision to leave the EU is historically explicable by Britain's very different historical experience, especially in the twentieth century, and because of our more extensive and deeper ties outside Europe. He challenges the orthodox view that Brexit was due solely to British or English exceptionalism: in choosing to leave the EU, the British, he argues, were in many ways voting as typical Europeans.