New History Atlas

Penguin’s new Atlas of British & Irish History fills a remarkable gap in history publishing. Almost unbelievably, it is fully twenty years since the last major historical atlas of the British Isles for the general reader appeared in the bookshops.

This twenty-year gap meant that in editing such a work, a great deal of new historical research would have to be taken into account. In particular, the new atlas could not ignore the fact that the study of British history itself has undergone perhaps its greatest revolution to date in the last twenty years. The ‘New British History’ that has emerged in this period aspires toward a balanced and holistic approach where traditional British history was invariably Anglocentric. Its starting-point is the recognition that the British Isles have always been home to a number of different nations and cultures, each with its own history – and that the history of the British Isles is the sum of all those histories.