From the Introduction....

Four memory themes are given particular attention [...] Their connections, spanning nearly all of our history, make up an arc of rise and fall: the long and contradictory aftermath of the Norman Conquest; the interpretation of the Civil War era and its ramification into a “Whig history” of progress; the history and conflicting memory of empire; and, most recently, the sense of England and Britain as nations in decline. My intention is to show how these ideas originated, what purposes they have served, and how they appear in the light of modern research. The book is, therefore, partly shaped by the stories and images that make up our collective memory. But I have also been concerned with things we have collectively forgotten and which I think we ought to remember. If this seems contradictory, I hope nevertheless it constitutes a coherent story.