Things fall apart when empires crumble. This time, we think, things will be different. They are not. This time, we are told, we will become great again. We will not. In this new edition of the hugely successful Rule Britannia, Danny Dorling and Sally Tomlinson argue that the vote to leave the EU was the last gasp of the old empire working its way out of the British psyche. Fuelled by a misplaced nostalgia, the result was driven by a lack of knowledge of Britain's imperial history, by a profound anxiety about Britain's status today, and by a deeply unrealistic vision of our future.

Danny Dorling is the Halford Mackinder Professor in geography at the University of Oxford. In 2015 he was a commissioner of the London Fairness Commission, which reported in 2016. His work concerns issues of housing, health, employment, education, wealth and poverty, and his books include The Atlas of the Real World (Thames and Hudson), Inequality and the 1% (Verso), Population 10 Billion (Constable) and All That Is Solid (Allen Lane).