This Land of Promise

Matthew Lockwood is the author of The Conquest of Death: Violence and the Birth of the Modern English State (Yale, 2017) and To Begin the World Over Again: How the American Revolution Devastated the Globe (Yale, 2019).He received his PhD from Yale University in 2014, where his dissertation won the Hans Gatzke Prize for outstanding dissertation in European history. He held posts at the Yale Center for the Study of Representative Institutions and at the University of Warwick before moving to the University of Alabama where he is currently Assistant Professor of History.

‘A terrific, clear-eyed and balanced history that cuts through today’s toxic debates… a very fine book that puts the current crisis, with all its complexities, into a longer perspective. Matthew Lockwood is not a tub-thumper or an ideologue but an enthralling story-teller… he keeps the focus on human individuals, taking five centuries of passages from violent persecution and extreme deprivation as the context… Lockwood writes a vivid, fluent prose and moves all these remarkable tales along at a cracking pace’ Daily Telegraph, five-star review ‘Compelling and humane… analyses some misconceptions about Britain’s history of immigration. We have a laudable past as a haven country – which Lockwood details in an accounts going back to 1695’ Independent, Top Reads for June ‘Vividly told, panoramic history of 1,000 years of Britain as the ‘asylum capital of the world’… Lockwood has a keen eye for irony and the moral dilemmas of history… this really is a brilliant book – topical, profound, deeply researched and in places beautifully written. For anyone who wants a broad historical perspective on today’s great ethical/political/environmental question, this is as good a place as any to start… Lockwood is excellent at finding powerful and entertaining characters to make his points’ Spectator ‘Important, comprehensive, and superbly researched. All the more urgent at the present time’ Bart Van Es