A Love Affair with Europe

‘Struck on reading it how succinctly it dealt with a huge subject, and dealing with it comprehensively without, seemingly, omitting anything relevant.’
Order! Order! Magazine

Europe has been close to Giles Radice’s heart since his earliest childhood. Ten years after the Second World War, as the European Common Market was being established, he set off to cycle across the continent. His encounters there were transformative – it was clear that Europe should unite, and that Britain could not stay on the margins.

During Radice’s subsequent years as an MP, his belief in the European ideal never wavered. This is a story of infatuation with European culture, a paean to the ideals and pragmatic importance of the EU, an indictment of governmental pandering to a Eurosceptic press, and a testament to the distress caused by the 2016 referendum and the years of inept government that have followed.

Our future, like our past, is inextricably tied to that of Europe. Radice examines, through a personal lens, what has been lost – and what might yet be salvaged.

GILES RADICE was a Labour member of the House of Lords. He served as Chairman of the Treasury Select Committee under Tony Blair between 1997 and 2001.