[]
Europe
  • Published: 26 March 2026
  • ISBN: 9781802062069
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 432

Europe

A New History

Formats & editions
EBook
26 Mar 2026
Audiobook
26 Mar 2026
Pre-order from…
Amazon Apple Books Google Play Kobo Booktopia eBooks.com

A new history of the idea of Europe from Ancient Greece to the present

What do we think we mean by ‘Europe’? If it cannot be defined by geography alone, is it bound by history, by its politics, by a shared culture? In this perception-changing book, historian Roderick Beaton reconfigures the entire history of Europe, from its distant beginnings to today, as the story of an idea.

Since its birth in ancient Greece, Europe has been defined, and redefined, by its people. Through this powerful lens, Beaton deftly surveys Europe’s major historical developments over 2,500 years, ending with the war in Ukraine. His focus is not on regions or nation states, but always on the continent as a whole, so that it appears in the sharpest outline. Throughout, Europe: A New History draws on original sources to allow the voices of the past, from Tacitus to Thatcher, to speak for themselves.

The story of Europe’s people is, Beaton shows us, as much about shared, and changing, identities as about great or wicked deeds, pitched battles, invasions or revolutions. Exploring the multilayered identities that have always come with being European, this wise, vital work places the Europe of today in the long arc of history, and lets us see it anew.
  • Published: 26 March 2026
  • ISBN: 9781802062069
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 432
Categories:

About the author

Roderick Beaton

Roderick Beaton is Emeritus Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at King's College London and Chair of Trustees of the British School at Athens, an institute of advanced research. He is a four-time winner of the Runciman Award, for his books An Introduction to Modern Greek Literature, George Seferis: Waiting for the Angel: A Biography, Byron's War: Romantic Rebellion, Greek Revolution, and Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation, published by Penguin in 2019. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, Commander of the Order of Honour of the Hellenic Republic, and an honorary citizen of Greece. He was knighted in 2024.

RB

Also by Roderick Beaton

Greece
See all

Praise for Europe

Praise for Roderick Beaton's previous book Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation

-

The best history of Greece around... Beautifully written and packed with insights about the culture and the people. I will be dipping into this book for the rest of my life

Victoria Hislop, The Week

Beaton's new book - judicious, well-researched and commendably up-to-date - deserves to be the standard general history of modern Greece in English for years to come

Financial Times

This book explores the history, not of a Greece of romantic or philhellenic imagination, but the reality of the country as it has become today. The empathy it evokes for the survival of modern Greek statehood against a recurring pattern of often existential crisis is all the more compelling, subtle and above all human in its many-sidedness. Beaton's account instantly becomes the single most outstanding treatment of its subject

Professor Robert Holland

A perceptive analysis of Greece's financial crisis, the embers of which continue to threaten to derail the single currency project of the EU

Country Life

A wonderfully engaging narrative... It is a superb achievement and to be recommended to anyone with even the most rudimentary interest

Professor Kevin Featherstone