1. Prologue to history: the prehistory of the British Isles -- 2. Roman Britain: from Bath to the Antonine Wall -- 3. Anglo-Saxon England and the Celtic lands in the early Middle Ages -- 4. Conquest, colonization, and culture: the High Middle Ages from 1066 to 1348 -- 5. Plague, politics, and power: the Later Middle Ages from the Black Death to the Wars of the Roses -- 6. Religion, warfare, and dynastic politics: the Tudors and the Stewarts in the sixteenth century -- 7. From Stewart to Stuart: the monarchy and the three kingdoms, 1603 -1642 -- 8. Civil wars, Interregnum and Restoration: from Edgehilll to the Battle of the Boyne -- 9. The British Isles in the first half of the eighteenth century: form the Bill of Rights to the Battle of Culloden -- 10. Reform, war, and rebellion: political culture in Britain and Ireland, 1746-1789 -- 11. The French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and their aftermath, 1789-1832 -- 12. The Victorian period: politics, society, and culture in the nineteenth century -- 13. Britain's moment as a world power: the British Empire in the nineteenth century -- 14. In the shadow of the Great War, c. 1890-1918 -- 15. The interwar years -- 16. The Second World War -- 17. The post-war period, 1945 to 1973: social change and the end of empire -- 18. Demands, disappointments, hopes, and promises: c. 1973-2004 -- Conclusion: history and the future of the British Isles in the twenty-first century