Between the Waves

**Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction**

‘Powerful, precise, morally engaged, wonderfully alert to character, context and the greater purpose of political life’ Rory Stewart

‘Will stand for many years as the authoritative political history’ David Kynaston

‘A cut above other Brexit accounts . . . even the most passionate Remainer – or Leaver – should enjoy it enormously’ Dominic Sandbrook, The Sunday Times

The definitive history of Britain’s tumultuous relationship with Europe – as it’s never been told before.

In a story of vaulting ambition and underhand politics, acclaimed writer Tom McTague chronicles the battle of ideas, events and personalities that first took the country into the Common Market in 1973, only to take it out of the European Union in an explosive referendum a little over forty years later.

McTague examines the conflicts that raged between the leading politicians of the twentieth century as they fought for the future of Europe – and the lesser-known actors in Britain’s great post-war drama: the Eurosceptic student radicals, Cold Warriors, eccentric billionaires and political strategists who turned the tide of history.

A riveting story of the clashing ideals that have pulled at Britain’s public imagination for more than seven decades, Between the Waves raises that most elemental of questions: who are we?

‘A sweeping, impressive and ambitious history of modern Europe’ Helen Lewis, author of Difficult Women