I. Prologue -- Offshore formations : the unbearable bandwidth of being British -- The limits of location : Greater Britain -- 'British' with a small 'b' : the impress of internationalism -- II. Registers -- 'We mustn't use the word "Empire" ' : the British name -- Homes away from home : the houses of Windsor -- Imperial welcome : the British subject -- The wind changes : human rights after Smuts -- Pride in the goods : the moral economy of the Common Market -- Uncommon law : the reach of British justice -- III. Repercussions -- East and west of Suez : receding frontiers -- Backing little Britain : distempers -- The last refuge : coming home to England -- 'British we are and British we stay' : troubles -- 'Stop the world' : Celtic departures -- 'Cosmologies of our own' : after Britain.

"How did Britain cease to be global? In 'Untied Kingdom', Stuart Ward tells the panoramic history of the end of Britain, tracing the ways in which Britishness has been imagined, experienced, disputed and ultimately discarded across the globe since the end of the Second World War. From Indian independence, West Indian immigration and African decolonization to the Suez Crisis and the Falklands War, he uncovers the demise of Britishness as a global civic idea and its impact on communities across the globe. He also shows the consequences of this diminished 'global reach' in Britain itself, from the Troubles in Northern Ireland to resurgent Englishness and the startling success of separatist political agendas in Scotland and Wales. Untied Kingdom puts the contemporary travails of the Union for the first time in their full global perspective as part of the much larger story of the progressive rollback of Britain's imaginative frontiers."-- Taken from dust jacket.