This is a history of modern Britain, told through its relationship with the sea. Each week of the course examines a different theme in British history, refracted through the ‘Home Waters’ of north-west Europe, or the wider Atlantic, Indian, Arctic and Pacific Oceans of Britain’s overseas empire. Drawing on literature and film as well as history and politics, and covering episodes from the Napoleonic Wars to Brexit, the course focuses on the century between 1850 and 1950.