This timely collection of essays explores British attitudes to Continental Europe that explain the Brexit decision. Addressing British-European entanglements and the impact of British Euroscepticism, the book argues that Britain is in denial about the strength of its ties to Europe, and that it needs to face Europe if it is to face the future.

Ina Habermann is Professor of English Literature at the University of Basel, Switzerland

Introduction: Understanding the past, facing the future - Ina Habermann
Part I Britain and Europe: political entanglements
1 Not with a bang but a whimper: Brexit in historical perspective - Robert Holland
2 'This is something which we know, in our bones, we cannot do': hopes and fears for a united Europe in Britain after the Second World War - Lara Feigel and Alisa Miller
3 EU enlargement and the freedom of movement: imagined communities in the Conservative Party's discourse on Europe (1997-2016) - Marlene Herrschaft-Iden
4 The discursive role of Europe in a disunited kingdom - Klaus Stolz
Part II British discourses of Europe in literature and film
5 'Extr'ord'nary people, the Germans': Germans as aliens in post-war British popular culture - Judith Vonberg
6 'I don't want to be a European': the European Other in British cultural discourse - Menno Spiering
7 The dystopian nightmare of a European superstate: British fiction and the EU - Lisa Bischoff
8 A case for a Green Brexit? Paul Kingsnorth, John Berger and the pros and cons of a sense of place - Christian Schmitt-Kilb
9 Brexit and the Tudor turn: Philippa Gregory's narratives of national grievance - Siobhan O'Connor
Part III Negotiating borders in British travel writing and memoir
10 Guards of Brexit? Revisiting the cultural significance of the white cliffs of Dover - Melanie Küng
11 From Iron Curtains to Iron Cliffs: British travel writing between East and West - Blanka Blagojevic
12 Fifty years of Unbelonging: a Gibraltarian writer's personal testimonial on the road to Brexit - M.G. Sanchez