The Isles made Davies the historian of the hour: not only did he set aside the insular approach to British affairs which treated Europe as a kind of backcloth to a cozy "Island Story," he retold the history of what we must loosely call the British Isles in the light of parallel events on the Continent. Because of his immersion in European history Davies first thought of calling his book The European History of the British Isles which would have suited one aspect of his polemical approach but would not have been right for the other: the need to declare passe all those histories of the United Kingdom that had ignored or marginalized the smaller nations and turned the history of the British into the exclusive narrative of the English.

Read the whole review in Virginia Quarterly Review.