SUMMARY:

The Conversations with Authors series in this issue features an interview with Stuart Ward, who discusses his new book Untied Kingdom: A Global History of the End of Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2023). The conversation covers the question of the entanglement of Britishness and the British Empire, lacunae in approaches to nationalism that do not take imperial contexts seriously, the analytical shortfalls of juxtaposing empire and nationalism in the context of modern and global history, and challenges of the global history of empires and comparative research on empires. The interview also touches on the Stuart Ward’s novel perspective on the historical semantics of the concept of decolonization and the vantage point such historical reconstruction provides for the historical narratives of decolonization. The latter will be of special interest to the readers of Ab Imperio in view of recent heightened interest in decolonization in the field of Russian and Soviet history.