This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair [Hardcover]

Hugo Young (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1999

With pervasive authority and great wit, an acclaimed historian and biographer creates a compelling and comprehensive narrative of Britain's post-World War II relationship with the rest of Europe.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"This is the story of fifty years in which Britain struggled to reconcile the past she could not forget with the future she could not avoid."

So opens Hugo Young's magisterial tour of the U.K.'s troubled relationship with Europe in general and the European Union in particular over the last half of the 20th century. Young, the doyen of liberal political columnists, has chosen to take on this subject at a time when the British Right remains in angry torment over it and the Labour Party appears to have at last made its peace with the Continent and all its works. The book opens with Churchill's putting on record for the first time an outline of a new united Europe, but it ends with Blair's actually "preparing to align the island with its natural hinterland beyond." In between there is a fascinating battle between wide-eyed idealism, brutal realpolitik, and treacherous conspiracy. Young has talked to everyone who matters on both sides of the Channel and elegantly produces a gripping narrative. In British terms, this is the story of half a century of wrecked political careers, ending up most recently with John Major's cataclysmic defeat in 1997. But on the wider stage, this is the story of a great question--Is Britain a European country?--and why Britain found it so difficult to answer. --Nick Wroe, Amazon.co.uk

From Publishers Weekly

With immense knowledge matched by a sure sense of narrative, Young has written the best book yet about Britain's attempt to make sense of itself after its era of empire. He takes a chronological approach, focusing on heads of state and those who carried out their policies, starting, as the subtitle indicates, with Winston Churchill and ending with Tony Blair. For 50 years, he writes, Britain has "struggled to reconcile the past she could not forget with the future she could not avoid." The question that drives the book is whether Britain, with its mythology of exceptionalism (famously expressed by Shakespeare in Richard II, from which Young takes his title), can accept the reality that it will have to become merely another country bound in some sort of European union. In the end, Young predicts, most Britons will accept the reality of alignment with the Continental nations, an acceptance that could have come about far less painfully four decades earlier had Britain's leaders not clung so fiercely to an obsolete sense of imperial grandeur. Readers who enjoyed Young's biography of Thatcher (The Iron Lady) will be glad to learn that he has brought his sharp sense of the intersection of character and policy to his appraisals of major political figures. Young combines the best qualities of a historianAthoroughness, context and a sense of the sweep of timeAwith the best qualities of a journalistAaccessibility, skepticism and pungent judgment.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 543 pages
• Publisher: Overlook Hardcover; 1St Edition edition (May 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879519398
• ISBN-13: 978-0879519391
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,826,957 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, biased account of EU, May 17, 2001

By 

William Podmore (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair (Hardcover)

Hugo Young of the Guardian gives us a fascinating and revealing portrait of Britain's relations with the European Union. He is passionately committed to the European Union, but his book presents much information very useful to those who oppose it.

He recounts that in the 1971-72 Parliamentary debates, "Ministers did not lie, but they avoided telling the full truth. They refrained from stating categorically that the law of the European Community would have supremacy over British law." "Nor did ministers state that the European Communities Act would be, in practice, irrevocable." "Enthusiasts for entry, as we have seen in the cases of Edward Heath and Geoffrey Howe, felt it prudent to mask the radical nature of the transaction they were proposing." He cites Howe's admission that the Government concealed much from Parliament. And he recalls that a Government lawyer said, "Open admission of what was being done to parliamentary sovereignty would be `so astounding' as to put the whole Bill in danger."

None repeated the clarity of Foreign Secretary Lord Home when he told the Lords in August 1961: "let me admit at once that the Treaty of Rome would involve considerable derogation of sovereignty." Its consequences would, he said, be "different in kind from any contract into which we have entered before."

EU supporters said that EC entry would bring economic growth. When it didn't, they said the Single Market would. When it didn't, they said the Exchange Rate Mechanism would - Young remarks, with considerable under-statement, "The story of the ERM was not an entirely happy one." When that failed, bringing the worst slump for sixty years, they said that the euro would bring growth.

He presents the real issue: "The serious case, surely, is ... about national control over big decisions. The EU renders collective a decision-making process, in some areas, that was once exclusively national." Entering the euro would end our national democratic control over policy: is this what we want?

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interested in Europe's future? This is a book you must read, January 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair (Hardcover)

"A history of Britain's relations with Europe since 1945 as seen by the country's leadership. Thoroughly researched, powerfully written, intense and passionate. A book of the decade, not just the year" -The Economist

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good "Textbook", May 30, 2011

By 

JSmalls - See all my reviews

This review is from: This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair (Paperback)

What makes this a useful book is the evolution of Britain's position on Europe. Read as a text to understand British history it is less strong, but it does highlight London's ambivalence toward the European Project.