The Cultural and Political History of Modern Britain

Landscape and place

Patriotism and national identities

Historical Pageants and the "Place of the Past" in modern British culture

History of the British landscape, preservationism

Electoral politics

The "Land Question" in modern Britain

Modern British political and cultural history; national identities; nationalism; landscape history; heritage

Paul Readman is Professor of Modern British History at King's College London. In 2018, he was elected to the Council of the Royal Historical Society. Readman is author of Land and Nation: Patriotism, National Identity and the Politics of Land (2008). His other publications include, as co-editor, The Land Question in Britain, 1759-1950 (2010), Borderlands in World History, 1700–1914 (2014) and Walking Histories, 1800–1914 (2016), as well as many articles and essays. Readman is Director of the major Arts & Humanities Research Council-funded project, ‘The Redress of the Past: Historical Pageants in Britain, 1905-2016’. This project has published articles and essays on pageants, and a multi-million-word database with details of over 650 pageants (http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/); it has also been responsible for a number of successful exhibitions on pageantry, in Carlisle, Bury St Edmunds and Scarborough: http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/events/

As a keen walker and perpetual tourist, Readman has a long-standing interest in the diverse ways that human experience shapes, and is shaped by, landscape and place. His new book, Storied Ground: Landscape and the Shaping of English National Identity, is published by Cambridge University Press.