This work is an exploration of the relationships of the constituent parts of Great Britain, to understand how England, Wales, and Scotland have interacted and influenced each other, and how the modern British policy and its distinctive institutions have emerged amongst them. A key theme of this book is the development - and perhaps now the disintegration - of their sense of Britishness. The author investigates how and why they have preserved their own national and regional identities, and what these mean for our own times where cultural and regional units are steadily replacing the nation state as the building block of an increasingly federated world. In so doing the author throws light not only on the history of Britain itself, and Britain's tangled dealings with Ireland, but also on Britain's changing role in the international community, as her imperial past gives way to new and less certain relationships with Europe, America, and the wider world.