Tom Nairn

For the last fifty years Tom Nairn has been one of Britain’s most consistently provocative and influential voices. No other writer has left so deep an impression on main stream debates about Scotland, Britain and nationalism. No other writer has so thoroughly interrogated the United Kingdom’s post-war crisis and decline. Old Nations, Auld Enemies, New Times brings together the full span of Nairn’s work, from his ground-breaking analysis of the British state in the 1960s and ’70s to his more recent examinations of globalisation, the English question and Scotland’s independence referendum. Nairn stands alongside the great Scottish intellectual and literary figures of recent decades. Old Nations is the definitive Nairn collection – and an indispensable guide for anyone looking to understand the current moment in Scottish and British politics.

In this classic text, first published in 1977, Tom Nairn memorably depicts the 'slow foundering' of the United Kingdom on the rocks of imperial decline, constitutional anachronism and the gathering force of civic nationalism. Rich in comparisons between the nationalisms of the British Isles and those of the wider world, thoughtful in its treatment of the interaction between nationality and social class, The Break-Up of Britain concludes with a bravura essay on the Janus-faced nature of national identity. Postscripts from the Thatcher and Blair years trace the political strategies whose upshot accelerated the demise of a British state they were intended to serve. As a second Scottish independence referendum beckons, a new Introduction by Anthony Barnett underlines the book's enduring relevance.

In this acclaimed study of British statehood, identity and culture, Tom Nairn deftly dispels the conviction that the Royal Family is nothing more than an amusing relic of feudalism or a mere tourist attraction. Instead, he argues that the monarchy is both apex and essence of the British state, the symbol of a national backwardness. In this fully updated edition, Nairn's powerful and bitterly comic prose lays bare Britain's peculiar, pseudo-modern, national identity-which remains stubbornly fixated on the Crown and its constitutional framework, the "parliamentary sovereignty" of Westminster.

Globalization has brought with it many difficult and contradictory phenomena: violence, deep national insecurities, religious divisions and individual insecurities. This book takes a critical look at three key areas - globalism, nationalism, and state-terror - to confront common mythologies and identify the root causes of the problems we face. Too many commentators still argue that globalization is predominantly a neo-liberal economic phenomenon; that nation-states are on the way out, and that terror is something that primarily comes from below. Global Matrix exposes the limitations of this argument. Written by two leading scholars, this is a lucid study of what place the nation-state has in a globalizing world that will appeal to students across the political and social sciences.

Globalization has brought with it many difficult and contradictory phenomena: violence, deep national insecurities, religious divisions and individual insecurities. This book takes a critical look at three key areas - globalism, nationalism, and state-terror - to confront common mythologies and identify the root causes of the problems we face. Too many commentators still argue that globalization is predominantly a neo-liberal economic phenomenon; that nation-states are on the way out, and that terror is something that primarily comes from below. Global Matrix exposes the limitations of this argument. Written by two leading scholars, this is a lucid study of what place the nation-state has in a globalizing world that will appeal to students across the political and social sciences.

Pariah is a retrospect of Tony Blair's recent New Labour plebiscite, so far the most absurd 'election' of the twenty-first century. After a much-vaunted Constitutional Revolution, overwhelming victory was obtained on less than a quarter of the electoral register, with more people abstaining than voted for Blair. In 2000 the Constitution of the United States collapsed into farce; in 2001 it was the turn of the United Kingdom, as the oldest and most stable of Western democracies turned into a despised pariah of the global age. 'How is Britain breaking up?' asks Tom Nairn. Is there any chance - or indeed any need - of its being repaired?In this corrosive polemic Nairn argues that democratic and constitutional reform alone provides an answer to such questions. But the longer the British ancien regime endures, the less chance there will be of such changes taking place by agreement. 'Reform or perish' is the moral; but perish farther looks like the only way towards reform.

In May 1968, France stood on the verge of full-blooded revolution. Here a rhythmic, vivid evocation from eyewitness Angelo Quattrocchi is complemented by Tom Nairn's cool and elegant appraisal to tell the astonishing story of those heady days. Paris is a seething battlefield of barricades, burning cars and CS gas. De Gaulle's riot police publicly inform him that their loyalty can no longer be taken for granted. Meanwhile students and millions of young striking workers on the streets raise ideas that had previously been the sole province of radical philosophers: "To forbid is forbidden"; "Be reasonable ... Demand the impossible"; "Freedom is the consciousness of our desires."

Over the past few decades, Tom Nairn has become one of the most respected and provocative writers on questions of nationalism, British politics and the constitution. In his seminal essay, "The Modern Janus," Nairn argued for the democratic necessity of nationalism in the modern world. Here, in this strikingly original and timely new work, he addresses the subsequent upheavals caused by nationalism.In Faces of Nationalism Tom Nairn argues that nation-building movements from 1750 to 1990 have saved the world from imperial barbarism. Contrary to many gloomy prognoses following the Soviet and Yugoslav collapses, Nairn argues that the chaos feared by so many observers is neither endless nor one-sidedly destructive. While insisting that nationalism is as inescapable as ever, Nairn shows how its forms and content are shifting. The ethnic definition of the national is giving way to the civic, the "natural" to the designed. Nairn believes that today's more civic and secular nationalism is a key feature of modernity and not an archaic reaction against it.Tom Nairn's wide-ranging discussion takes in Ireland and Palestine, Bosnia and the Czech and Slovak republics, Cambodia and Rwanda, South Africa and Scotland. Faces of Nationalism is a work that demands to be read by anyone wanting to understand one of the central features of politics in the modern world.