Product Description
Greece
Author: Roderick Beaton
Format: Paperback
Biography of a Modern Nation
Shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize 2020 and the Runciman Award 2021
A Financial Times Book of the Year
'The best history of Greece around... Beautifully written and packed with insights about the culture and the people. I will be dipping into this book for the rest of my life' — Victoria Hislop
We think we know ancient Greece, the civilisation that shares the same name and gave us just about everything that defines 'western' culture today, in the arts, sciences, social sciences and politics. Yet, as Greece has been brought under repeated scrutiny during the financial crises that have convulsed the country since 2010, worldwide coverage has revealed just how poorly we grasp the modern nation. This book sets out to understand the modern Greeks on their own terms.
How did Greece come to be so powerfully attached to the legacy of the ancients in the first place, and then define an identity for themselves that is at once Greek and modern? This book reveals the remarkable achievement, during the last 300 years, of building a modern nation on, sometimes literally, the ruins of a vanished civilisation.
This is the story of the Greek nation-state but also, and perhaps more fundamentally, of the collective identity that goes with it. It is not only a history of events and high politics, it is also a history of culture, of the arts, of people and of ideas.
About the Author
Roderick Beaton is Emeritus Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at King's College London and Chair of Trustees of the British School at Athens, an institute of advanced research. He is a four-time winner of the Runciman Award, for his books An Introduction to Modern Greek Literature, George Seferis: Waiting for the Angel: A Biography, Byron's War: Romantic Rebellion, Greek Revolution, and Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation, published by Penguin in 2019. He is also the author of The Greeks: A Global History. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, Commander of the Order of Honour of the Hellenic Republic, and an honorary citizen of Greece. He was knighted in 2025.
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