An “evocatively written examination” of the Americans who fought alongside the British during the American Revolution (American Spectator). The American Revolution was not simply a battle between the independence-minded colonists and the oppressive British. As Thomas B. Allen reminds us, it was also a savage and often deeply personal civil war, in which conflicting visions of America pitted neighbor against neighbor and Patriot against Tory on the battlefield, on the village green, and even in church. In this outstanding and vital history, Allen tells the complete story of the Tories, tracing their lives and experiences throughout the revolutionary period. Based on documents in archives from Nova Scotia to London, Tories adds a fresh perspective to our knowledge of the Revolution and sheds an important new light on the little-known figures whose lives were forever changed when they remained faithful to their mother country.

This title seeks to expose the turmoil at the heart of the Conservative Party in the 12 months prior to the 2001 General Election. Using primary sources Walters reconstructs the battles which beset William Hague's leadership and in particular the role of Michael Portillo in the party's struggle for survival. The book reads like a political drama - or perhaps tragedy - with verbatim conversations reported and vivid descriptions of key events.

Two weeks before General Cornwallis surrendered his army at Yorktown, a Loyalist yeoman farmer who had fought alongside the British for six years was hanged as a spy at Schuylerville, New York before a crowd of his former friends and neighbors. Like the vast majority of the estimated 500,000 Loyalists who gambled on a British victory, Thomas Loveless and his family were ordinary people swept up by social and political forces beyond their control. Tory Spy analyzes this "Loyalist Dilemma," making use of British and American documents of the period and providing useful illustrations, maps, appendices, footnotes, and an index. A few years ago, the movie "The Patriot" starring Mel Gibson graphically portrayed Rebel-Tory warfare in the Carolinas during 1779-1780. The Rebel family in "The Patriot" was a fictional composite, but the trials of the "Loyalist" Thomas Loveless family of Albany County, New York were real. Located astride the principal invasion corridor between Canada and the U.S., and a hotbed of Rebel-Tory conflict, Albany County became a battleground between a cadre of refugee "Tory Spies" based in Canada and their Rebel former neighbors. Tory Spy offers a rare snapshot of the Revolutionary War as a multi-level conflict, in which brother fought brother, neighbor betrayed neighbor, and vague charges of espionage meant a quick route to the gallows. It is a largely untold story which offers new insights into the price paid by many of the Loyalists who were the hidden losers of America's first "civil war." This is a story for our times-it is about people responding to the pressures of revolutionary change. Their world was coming apart, and the outcome was unpredictable. Tory Spy forces the reader to ask: What would my family and I do if our neighborhood became a war zone torn apart by bloody battles and increasingly lethal intelligence warfare, and we were viewed as potential spies or combatants? Contemporary Americans may be surprised by what Tory Spy tells them about the violent social conflict that gave birth to their country. Yet the book's interwoven stories-a Loyalist farm family's struggle to survive amidst the partisan violence in Albany County, the father's British military service and later exploits as an officer in the "Tory Secret Service," and the bizarre circumstances surrounding his capture, trial, and execution-were among the harsh realities of America's Revolution. More than 230 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, these exciting stories remain part of America's revolutionary heritage, and they deserve to be told.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2017 #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER ‘The best political book of the year’ Andrew Marr ‘A superb work of storytelling and reporting. Sets new benchmark for the writing of contemporary political history’ Guardian The only book to tell the full story of how and why Britain voted to leave the EU.

Political decisions are never taken in a vacuum but are shaped both by current events and historical context. In other words, long-term developments and patterns in which the accumulated memory of what came earlier, can greatly (and sometimes subconsciously) influence subsequent policy choices. Working forward from the later seventeenth century, this book explores the ’deep history’ of the changing and competing understandings within the Tory party of the role Britain has aspired to play on a world stage. Conservatism has long been one of the major British political tendencies, committed to the defence of established institutions, with a strong sense of the ’national interest’, and embracing both ’liberal’ and ’authoritarian’ views of empire. The Tory party has, moreover, at several times been deeply divided, if not convulsed, by different perspectives on Britain’s international orientation and different positions on foreign and imperial policy. Underlying Tory beliefs upon which views of Britain’s global role were built were often not stated but assumed. As a result they tend to be obscured from historical view. This book seeks to recover and reconsider those beliefs, and to understand how the Tory party has sought to navigate its way through the difficult pathways of foreign and imperial politics, and why this determination outlasted Britain’s rapid decolonisation and was apparently remarkably little affected by it. With a supporting cast from Pitt to Disraeli, Churchill to Thatcher, the book provides a fascinating insight into the influence of history over politics. Moreover it argues that there has been an inherent politicisation of the concept of national interests, such that strategic culture and foreign policy cannot be understood other than in terms of a historically distorted political debate.

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