Cornwall: A History: Revised and Updated Edition

Philip Payton’s classic history of Cornwall, first published in 1996, is brought into the twenty-first century in this revised and updated edition from University of Exeter Press. Cornwall: A History begins with the region’s geology and prehistory, moving through Celtic times to the creation of the kingdom of Kernow and its relationship with neighboring England. Payton examines the political accommodation of medieval Cornwall by the expanding English state as well as the flowering in the middle ages of literature in the Cornish language. He explores resistance to English intrusion, in the rebellions of 1497 and 1549 and in the Civil War, and Cornwall’s role in the subsequent expansion of Britain’s global influence and industry, and concludes with a consideration of the nature of twenty-first century Cornwall.

Philip Payton is professor emeritus of Cornish and Australian studies at the University of Exeter and professor of history at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and the former director of the Institute of Cornish Studies at the University of Exeter. He also edited Cornish Studies.