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Great Powers
  • Published: 12 January 2027
  • ISBN: 9780241434376
  • Imprint: Allen Lane
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 736
  • RRP: $95.00
Categories:

Great Powers

A History of Britain and Germany

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A gripping history of the two nations’ turbulent relationship over three centuries and two world wars

'Engrossing, deeply researched and elegantly written', RICHARD J. EVANS

'Judicious, balanced and compelling', IAN KERSHAW

'A deeply humane reading', NEIL MACGREGOR

In September 1714, the elector of Hanover crossed the North Sea to be crowned king of Great Britain. His reign as George I marked the beginning of a close yet fraught relationship that would shape the destinies of both Britain and Germany, with profound consequences for Europe and the modern world order.

Great Powers tells the story of this relationship from ancestral alliance to bitter enmity and, eventually, reconciliation. It reveals the many links that united Britons and Germans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the unprecedented violence they inflicted on each other in the twentieth, and how they have grappled with its legacy ever since. The book’s sweep takes in not only the crises that led to conflict and dictatorship, but also the great cultural achievements brought about by people moving across borders: the birth of new ideas, music, art and literature. Drawing on diaries, letters and many other first-hand accounts, Jan Rüger shows events unfolding through the eyes of those in power as well as the many who were caught in between: families separated by war, refugees escaping persecution, emigrants starting a new life, exiles returning to the country they had been forced to flee.

Evocatively written and deeply researched, this is the engrossing history of the making of two nations, their destructive pursuit of power and the shared past that binds them together into the present.
  • Published: 12 January 2027
  • ISBN: 9780241434376
  • Imprint: Allen Lane
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 736
  • RRP: $95.00
Categories:

Praise for Great Powers

Deftly combines masterly coverage of politics with social and cultural history

Richard J. Evans

Both illuminating and a pleasure to read

Ian Kershaw

A deeply humane reading of a dreadful human tragedy

Neil MacGregor

Rüger's ambitious history of the Anglo-German love-hate relationship is not only timely but essential reading

Daniel Johnson, The Critic

Swims along like a river in spate, swirling up alluring backwaters and diving into pools full of surprises

Ferdinand Mount, Literary Review

Well-researched and impressively scholarly … superb

Simon Heffer, Sunday Telegraph

Splendid ... a work of remarkable scope, erudition and relevance

Brendan Simms, Engelsberg Ideas

Great Powers should be read far and wide – on both sides of the North Sea

Katja Hoyer, Spectator

A fine book, well-crafted and fluent

Philip Stephens, Financial Times

Rüger is an uncommonly able chronicler, never less than readable

Max Hastings, Sunday Times