Has Britain always looked backwards?

From the “Blitz spirit” invoked in the Covid-19 pandemic, to the 16th-century sense that a lost greatness needed to be recovered, historian Hannah Rose Woods reveals how nostalgia for a bygone era is nothing new. Speaking to Elinor Evans about her new book Rule, Nostalgia, she discusses the various ways our ancestors have looked back at our national past.

Hannah Rose Woods is the author of Rule, Nostalgia: A Backwards History of Britain (Ebury Publishing, 2022)