Strong family ties

Kathleen Burk, Professor of History at University College, London, has written a magisterial overview of Anglo/American relations from 1497, when John and Sebastian Cabot, in Hakluyt’s words, ‘discovered that land which no men before that time had attempted’, until the modern age. Old World, New World is a remarkable achievement, based as it is upon massive and wide-ranging scholarship. It will undoubtedly become the first port of call for anyone seeking to understand this vast subject.

But Professor Burk is, in Isaiah Berlin’s terms, a fox who knows many things rather than a hedgehog who knows one big thing. Her survey lacks a conclusion, and, in a sense, lacks also an overarching theme. Unlike her former teacher, A. J. P. Taylor, she is a pointillist, a Seurat not a David or a Géricault.

Her conclusion, such as it is, is that there is ‘a love-hate Anglo-American special relationship’ — but perhaps most special relationships are rather like that.