Name Stuart Laycock | Role Author | |
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Books All the Countries We've Ev, Britannia ‑ The Failed State: Tri, Warlords: The Struggle f, Unroman Britain: Exposing, Roman Buckles and Milita | ||
Stuart Laycock is a British historian and author best known for the popular-history book All the Countries We've Ever Invaded: And the Few We Never Got Round To. He has also written extensively on Roman and post-Roman Britain.
Contents
Life
He studied Classics at Cambridge.
All the Countries We've Ever Invaded
All the Countries We've Ever Invaded: And the Few We Never Got Round To (2012) attempts to catalogue every country Britain has ever invaded or made an incursion into, whether they were part of the British Empire or suffered a briefer attack, were threatened, or forced to negotiate. Incursions by privateers, private explorers, etc, are also listed. The earliest mentioned invasion was in 197 AD, when Clodius Albinus took many British soldiers across the English Channel to attack Gaul, being defeated at Lyon. 90% of the world's countries have suffered British attack at some point in their history, with only 22 spared. France is the nearest rival to Britain's record.
The book was attacked by Richard Seymour in the Guardian for trivialising the suffering caused by imperialism. Although the book claims not to be pro or anti empire, Seymour accused it of "moral ambivalence" and "empire nostalgia". Seymour also criticised it for its unhistorical elements, including invasions long before the existence of Britain as a nation, but praised it for showing how British power went far beyond the overt machinery of empire to include economic and other forces.
Other books
Laycock has also written books on late-Roman Britain: Britannia - The Failed State and Warlords: The Struggle for Power in Post-Roman Britain. Warlords advances the theory that the Anglo-Saxon invasion of England was a takeover by a warrior elite. With Miles Russell, he wrote UnRoman Britain, which claims that Britain was not significantly influenced by Roman occupation. Laycock's first book of poetry, Zone:Poems from the Bosnian War, drew on his experiences as an aid worker.