This history of modern Europe – already a standard work, which has been reprinted eight times – was written in the belief that the pattern of European development since 1789 can only be understood by a study of those all-embracing forces that have affected the whole continent, from Britain to the Balkans.

          Thus Dr Thomson emphasizes particularly the overall factors of population growth, industrialization, overseas expansion, democracy and socialism, the impact of nationalism, and the connexion between war and revolution. He considers these, not country by country, but phase by phase, so that the development of European civilization over the past century and a half is unfolded as a continuous whole.

          The result is a history whose very detail has a significant contribution to make in depicting the pattern of the past, – a history of which the Economist said: "It is to be hoped that it will be found… wherever intelligent men and women think and read."