These Divided Isles

Britain and Ireland, Past and Future

Philip Stephens

Evoking the tumultuous history of the relationship between Britain and Ireland, These Divided Isles investigates the complexities of culture and colonization to ask what the future holds for both countries.

Ireland is Britain's closest neighbor—the sea crossing from Scotland measures only twelve miles. Ireland was also its first conquered territory in what became Britain's empire. The two nation's stories have been intertwined since Anglo-Norman invaders crossed the Irish Sea during the twelfth century.

These Divided Isles tells the extraordinary history of the past century in this tumultuous relationship, from the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1922 to the present day. This is a tale of deep division between Catholic nationalism and Protestant unionism, of wars and terrorist violence, and of occasional moments of great courage on the part of British and Irish leaders.

Today, the post-Brexit weakening of the UK's constitutional ties has coincided with the march of demography in Northern Ireland as the Protestant unionist majority continues to shrink. Sinn Féin's historic string of electoral victories in Northern Ireland since 2022 has once more resurfaced the unfinished business of partition. Here, Philip Stephens explores how Ireland might escape its troubled past by deploying history to inform the future rather than hold it in place.

Philips Stephens is an award-winning journalist and contributing editor at the Financial Times, where he was previously director of the Editorial Board and chief political commentator. Both British and Irish, having been brought up in London with roots in Co Mayo, his illustrious career has landed him unique access to foreign policymakers in Britain and around the world. Stephens has won the David Watt Prize for Outstanding Political Journalism and Political Journalist of the Year in the British Press Awards. He is the author of Politics and the Pound, Tony Blair and Britain Alone, but These Troubled Isles is his first book to be published in America. Philip lives in England.

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Endorsements & Reviews

Praise for Philip Stephens’s Britain Alone:

"Admirably lucid and measured, as well as studded with sharp pen portraits of the key players, Britain Alone gives us the fullest long-run political and diplomatic narrative yet of Britain's fateful, tragi-comic road to Brexit.” David Kynaston, author of A Northern Wind: Britain 1962-65

"Philip Stephens has produced that rare thing—an instant classic. Britain Alone is the codebook we need to unravel the six and a half decades between Suez and Brexit, and Stephens is a master of historical codebreaking.” Peter Hennessy, author of Never Again: Britain, 1945-51; Having it so Good: Britain in the Fifties; and Winds of Change: Britain in the Early Sixties

"This is a compelling account of how a country that once prided itself on its active internationalism now appears as curiously disengaged, drifting away from its natural allies. Philip Stephens tell the story with a journalist's eye for the interplay of personality and policy-making.” Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies, King's College London

"With his profound knowledge of the politics of Westminster, Washington, and the European Union, Philip Stephens tells the increasingly depressing story of Britain's failure to adjust to the loss of empire and to the reality of life as a middle ranking country, with a distinguished culture and history. No one is likely to write this modern history of decline with more brio and comprehensive insight.” Chris Patten, chancellor of Oxford University and governor of Hong Kong from 1992 until 1997

"Having talked to many of the leading players over decades, Philip Stephens gives us a ringside seat at the drama of how Britain lost, found and lost again its post-imperial international role. Sad and fascinating.” Timothy Garton Ash, author of Homelands: A Personal History of Europe and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University

"A tour de force. Philip Stephens combines an engaging narrative, packed with fascinating detail with a profound and thought provoking analysis of the UK's place in the world from Suez to the present day. A readable and authoritative account of Britain's international role.” Anand Menon, professor of foriegn affairs, King's College London

“A compelling, informative and readable history book. It offers some much-needed substance into the overly emotional and often superficial debate about the ways the UK can use its still significant capabilities to define and protect its interests in the world.” Helene von Bismark, The Financial Times

“Commanding. Rarely if ever, in the history of the British state since 1707, has one half of Britain's ruling elite committed an act of policy viewed with such absolute contempt by the other half; and rarely has that contempt been expressed with such elegance, such fluency, and such a devastating wealth of supporting detail.” Scotsman

"A magnificent, exhilarating book, laying bare the contradictions, misunderstandings and delusions that led Britain first to build a bridge across the Channel and then bulldoze it.” Prospect

"Philip Stephens' history of British foreign policy since World War II will not be bettered for many years. Much more readable than most works of history, it is also more intellectually rigorous than a lot of journalism. The anecdotes are telling and the judgements judicious, while the reportage is often based on first-hand observation.” - Charles Grant, Director of the Centre for European Reform

"The work of a historian as well as of a great writer and journalist.” Catherine Colonna, French Ambassador to the United Kingdom