Welcome to Litsy!

An elegant, vibrant history of the world's most over-achieving and tempestuous continent, published as it faces some of the most existential political threats to its common identity since WW2. Simon Jenkins recounts the 2000 year history of an extraordinary continent - or as he calls it, 'a macro history of the North West corner of Asia' - taking the reader from Greece and Rome, through the Dark Ages, the Reformation and the French Revolution, to the Second World War and up to the present day. He brings together the transformative forces and dominant eras in one chronological narrative, told from beginning to end. With a focus on those who held power - looking at leaders from Julius Caesar and Joan of Arc, to Wellington and Angela Merkel, as well as cultural figures from Aristotle to Shakespeare and Picasso - he paints a portrait of Europe as a dispersed group of power centres struggling to reconcile the need for unity with the demand for diversity, a story which resonates powerfully in the present.