I. Introduction : imagining and reimagining `Britain' -- II. The state created -- A providential people -- A messianic state -- Providentialism without religion -- Triumph of the metropolitan British state -- Social citizenship and British identity : providentialism without empire -- Statecraft and state mission -- III. The state in decay -- Decay of British social citizenship -- Decay of the metropolitan elite -- Decay of the world state -- Decay of the unionist settlement -- Inventing and reinventing the state -- IV. The state recreated -- Creative statecraft and the reinvention of Britain -- Recasting the post-war settlement -- Reshaping state-civil society relations -- Reshaping the constitution -- Recreating British identity -- Statecraft and the recreation of the state -- V. The end of the state? -- Millennium as a climactic moment -- Crisis of the British economy -- Crisis of the British party system -- Sundered union and the crisis of providentialism -- Waking from a nightmare.