Nineteenth-Century Britain: Integration and Diversity (Ford Lectures)

While nineteenth-century Britain was committed to achieving national integration, it also hoped to maintain regional diversity. Keith Robbins looks at various aspects of life which served to unite or divide the nation, including religion, patterns of eating and drinking, the political system, commercial development, education, language, literature, and music. He concludes that the "British" nation, though not uniform in character, became sufficiently consolidated throughout the nineteenth century to withstand the divisive crises of the early twentieth century, particularly World War I. A stimulating account of the making of the modern British nation, this study is of continuing relevance today.