Tom Nairn has been the most forceful and original mind to confront, de-mask and anatomise the British state. The perception that Great Britain was a multinational state and not a united nation had never quite been lost over the centuries, but it was Nairn who almost single-handedly hammered this truth into the skull of British intellectuals and campaigners until it became – as it is today – practically uncontested by the political class.
NEAL ASCHERSON, London Review of Books
For the last fifty years Tom Nairn has been one of Britain's most consistently provocative and influential voices. No other writer has left so deep an impression on mainstream debates about Scotland, Britain and nationalism. No other writer has so thoroughly interrogated the United Kingdom's post-war crisis and decline.
Old Nations, Auld Enemies, New Times brings together, for the first time, the full span of Nairn's work, from his ground-breaking analysis of the British state in the 1960s and '70s to his more recent examinations of globalisation, the English question and Scotland's independence referendum.
Nairn stands alongside the great Scottish intellectual and literary figures of recent decades. Old Nations is the definitive Nairn collection – and an indispensable guide for anyone looking to understand the current moment in Scottish and British politics.
For originality of mind, Tom Nairn is without equal among his contemporaries. In fifty years, there has never been a time in my memory in which that he was saying went with the flow of opinion, on the left or at large ... All of this in a style of extraordinary vigour and beauty – and not least humour: writing as democratic as his own unswerving politics. One thinks: if only there were more like him. But that would be a contradiction in terms.
PERRY ANDERSON, New Left Review
Tom Nairn is well known both as a major contributor to debates about Scottish nationalism and the re-configuring of the current UK, and as a supremely thoughtful and witty writer. This collection of his writings illustrates the evolution of his ideas and will be invaluable. Whether one agrees with Nairn or not, his arguments always make one think afresh.
LINDA COLLEY, Professor of History, Princeton University