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Tom Nairn (1932-2023) was one of the UK's most gifted left-wing thinkers and a towering radical imagination. His books included The Break-Up of Britain, The Enchanted Glass: Britain and Its Monarchy and The Left Against Europe?The most forceful and original mind to confront, demask and anatomise the British state. The perception that Great Britain was a multinational state and not a united nation had never quite been lost over the centuries, but it was Tom Nairn who almost single-handedly hammered this truth into the skull of British intellectuals and campaigners until it became - as it is today - practically uncontested by the political class
- Neal Ascherson,
<i>The Break-Up of Britain</i> is Tom Nairn's greatest book. A potent and long-lasting challenge
Scotsman
Tom Nairn pioneered critical retrospect of the United Kingdom, and scandalised people by looking forward calmly to its disintegration. This in a style of extraordinary vigour and beauty - and not least humour: writing as democratic as his own unswerving politics
- Perry Anderson,
Tom Nairn's fundamental insight was to recognise that the United Kingdom was an imperial construct, and that the ties that once bound the people of these islands were fraying
New Statesman
More than anyone else, Tom Nairn has shaped how we think about the United Kingdom and its creaking constitutional architecture. The national conversation he started, the national journey he so profoundly shaped in his work, is far from over
Herald
Powerful and prophetic. Nairn is perhaps Britain's most perceptive and ambitious national storyteller, an audaciously creative stylist.
- New Statesman, Rory Scothorne
Combines often stunning writing with immense knowledge of literature, history, and political philosophy ... Nairn has made a priceless contribution towards a desperately needed new discourse.
The Hindu
The most significant book on British politics of the past half-century
- Anthony Barnett, openDemocracy
Rich in comparisons between the nationalisms of the British Isles and those of the wider world, thoughtful in its treatment of the interaction between nationality and social class, The Break-Up of Britain concludes with a bravura essay on the Janus-faced nature of national identity. Postscripts from the Thatcher and Blair years trace the political strategies whose upshot accelerated the demise of a British state they were intended to serve.
As a second Scottish independence referendum beckons, a new Introduction by Anthony Barnett underlines the book's enduring relevance.