Inventing and Resisting Britain: Cultural Identities in Britain and Ireland, 1685-1789 tells the story of the birth of Britain and its development in the eighteenth century. Looking at England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales in turn, and at issues such as religion, Jacobitism, nationalism, feminism, money, the British Empire, travel, Romanticism, and the idea of history, it asks: How did Britain come into being? How successful was it? What were its problems? How do they remain relevant today?

Challenging the idea of a unified British identity in the eighteenth century, the book suggests that a lack of understanding of British diversity has helped to create tensions in Britain in the twentieth century. It explores the idea of dual identity - how far could people be both Irish and British - and religious, gender and non-national political differences within Britain, using the past to shed a fresh light on contemporary UK and Irish identity.