ABSTRACT
The contemporary debate on European integration is prey to distortions through the deployment of outdated national stereotypes and, in the case of some British Conservatives, an insularity arising from nostalgia for lost greatness, which is manifest in some recent controversies over British history. This chapter focuses on the latent “Europhobia” which manifested itself in the controversy around John Charmley’s 1992 revisionist biography of Churchill. Considering Winston Churchill’s career as a political maverick, his posthumous status as a Conservative icon might seem odd. The chapter provides a comprehensive survey of works which might be included under the rubric of the “new Tory historiography”. Some of the revisionist historiography has been the product of the normal academic business, in a time of specialisation and professionalisation in historical research, of modifying big pictures by insisting on more carefully detailed studies.
