SHORTLISTED FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE 2020 AND THE RUNCIMAN AWARD 2021A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR The best history of Greece around... Beautifully written and packed with insights about the culture and the people. I will be dipping into this book for the rest of my life Victoria HislopWe think we know ancient Greece the civilisation that shares the same name and gave us just about everything that defines western culture today in the arts sciences social sciences and politics. Yet as Greece has been brought under repeated scrutiny during the financial crises that have convulsed the country since 2010 worldwide coverage has revealed just how poorly we grasp the modern nation. This book sets out to understand the modern Greeks on their own terms.How did Greece come to be so powerfully attached to the legacy of the ancients in the first place and then define an identity for themselves that is at once Greek and modern This book reveals the remarkable achievement during the last 300 years of building a modern nation on sometimes literally the ruins of a vanished civilisation. This is the story of the Greek nationstate but also and perhaps more fundamentally of the collective identity that goes with it. It is not only a history of events and high politics it is also a history of culture of the arts of people and of ideas.