The world we live in today has not actually been in place very long. It was preceded by layer after layer of unceasing political, cultural, social and international change. Even a casual reader of the daily papers has witnessed the map of Europe being radically altered in the space of just a dozen years. If one thinks of the broader sweep of history, one can see in the longer term that all communities, all institutions, and all countries are impermanent. It is this line of thought that “Vanished Kingdoms” aims to explore. In a series of case studies, chosen from different periods and various regions of European history, “Vanished Kingdoms” demonstrates how rigid and inaccurate our mental maps of the past can be. Ranging from the post-Roman Kingdom of Strathclyde, through the medieval civilizations of Aragon and Provence, right up to the evaporation of the Soviet Union, the reader is taken on a tour of lost cities and forgotten worlds.The atmosphere and flavour of each lost community is evoked through its art, writing, monuments and poetry, and each study ends with a return to the present day, instructing the reader on how to visit the area and how to recognise the traces of a supposedly ‘vanished’ heritage. Impeccably researched and vividly imagined by one of our leading historians, “Vanished Kingdoms” demonstrates, as never before, the striking contrast between the present and the past.