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Precarious times: temporality and history in modern German culture

such as a perceived lack of democracy, autonomy and national identity that come with membership. That these issues are being discussed during an unprecedented, world-wide pandemic only heightens the sense that, as the French would have it, seul le provisiore perdure. In a thoughtful chapter by Michael Leigh, he discusses what he terms a ‘disintegration scenario’, making the valid point that the single currency, the Schengen open borders venture and the admission of eleven former communist countries ‘may have amounted to overreach’ (p.213). He warns that Eurosceptic nationalists in other member states could still wield the threat of secession whenever they deem it a vote winner. This scenario depicts the failing euro as promoting divergence rather than convergence and envisages the possibility of the EU eventually disbanding into groups of States with disparate interests; in its most benign form this is referred to as ‘multi-speed Europe’. The euro and migration crises of the last ten years have, according to this hypothesis, produced less, rather more integration with ‘member states showing little solidarity and defending often misconceived national interests’ (p.214). Leigh argues that this has provided political capital to Eurosceptic political movements that are on the rise, having captured close to a third of the parliamentary seats in the 2019 election. Whilst, they tend, by definition, to be disunited, they embody intolerant values that are opposed to the principles on which the EU is founded. Leigh cites the largely ineffective ruleof-law actions against Hungary and Poland as a measure of its inability to enforce respect for ‘EU values’. The book is not either an elegant or easy read; one has, at times, to fight ones’ way from sentence to sentence but taken as a whole the contributing team have provided the means by which students of twenty-first-century British history can mine genuinely diverse views from across the European continent and beyond as the country emerges, one hopes, into a post-pandemic, post-EU, entirely productive future.