Britannia: 100 Documents that Shaped a Nation - Tapa dura

In Britannia Graham Stewart traces two thousand years of an island's story - from Roman province to twenty-first century European nation-state - through one hundred historic documents. From the eighth-century Lindisfarne Gospels to the great testament of Norman bureaucracy, the Domesday Book, and from the designs for the Union Jack in 1606 to Neville Chamberlain's 1938 Munich agreement with Hitler, the documents selected embrace a wide range of national endeavours: politics and religion, warfare and diplomacy, economics and the law, science and invention, literature and journalism, as well as sport and popular music. The first edition of The Times rubs shoulders with the rules of the newly formed Marylebone Cricket Club; the designs for Stephenson's Rocket with the Catholic Emancipation Act; Lord Kitchener's iconic First World War recruitment poster with Clause Four of the Labour Party's constitution; and the Beatles' Sgt Pepper album cover with Britain's accession treaty to the European Economic Community. These are documents that not only defined their own eras, but which continue to resonate today.

Graham Stewart was born in 1969 and educated at St Andrews and Cambridge universities. His first book, Burying Caesar: Churchill, Chamberlain and the Battle for the Tory Party was published to international acclaim in 1999. Joining The Times as a leader writer in 2000, he wrote the latest volume of the newspaper's history, The Murdoch Years, in 2005. His other books are Friendship and Betrayal: Ambition and the Limits of Loyalty, and His Finest Hours: Winston Churchill's War Speeches. He currently writes The Times' weekly 'Past Notes' column, and is writing a history of Britain in the 1980s.