Roderick Beaton, "Europe: A New History" (Allen Lane, 2026)

What do we talk about when we talk about Europe? Is it defined by geography? Or is it politics, or shared culture? In Europe: A New History (Allen Lane, 2026),

award-winning historian Roderick Beaton tells the story of Europe as

never before—as the history of an idea, and a collective identity.

Since

its dramatic birth in ancient Greece, 'Europe' has been defined, and

redefined, by its people. Through this powerful lens, and with the

narrative drive and scope of a novelist, Beaton deftly surveys Europe’s

major historical developments: the rise and fall of Rome; the explosion

of Christianity; the intellectual ferment of the Renaissance and the

Enlightenment; the arrival of Europeans in the Americas; the violent

upheavals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and the

uncertainties of the present. Throughout, original sources allow the