Book excerpt: ** A FINANCIAL TIMES, NEW STATESMAN AND GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR ** 'A must read for anyone wanting to understand where the roots of our sense of a nation originated' - Janina Ramirez, bestselling author of Femina 'A sharp new history of longing for the good old days' - Financial Times 'Our national story is so much stranger than we think- this book brilliantly insists that we look at it afresh' - James Hawes, bestselling author of The Shortest History of England ____________________________________________________ How has nostalgia shaped Britain? Modern politicians implore us to draw on the 'Blitz Spirit' of wartime Britain, post-war Britons mourned the lost innocence of Edwardian life, anxious Edwardians longed to return to a golden era of Victorian optimism, while Victorian artists dreamt of retreating to a medieval, pre-industrial age. Longing to go back to the 'good old days' is nothing new, but it's also not what it used to be. Rule, Nostalgia is an eye-opening history of Britain's perennial fixation with its own past that explores why nostalgia has been such an enduring and seductive emotion across hundreds of years of change. Cultural historian Hannah Rose Woods paints a novel picture of Britain, both strange and familiar, separating the fact from the fantasy, debunking pervasive myths and illuminating the remarkable influence that nostalgia's perpetual backwards glance has had on our history, politics and society over the last five hundred years. This is a timely and enlightening interrogation of national character, emotion, identity and myth making that explores how this nostalgic isle's history was written, re-written and (rightly or wrongly) remembered.