This text introduces readers to the new perspectives opened up by the adoption of a truly British approach - one that encompasses on equal terms the interacting histories of Wales, Ireland, Scotland and England - to the history of the Atlantic Archipelago from the time of Thomas Cromwell in the 1530s-1540s, to the Act of Union (1707). The core of the book consists of a series of chronological essays surveying the period from end to end; supplemented by a detailed historiographical and conceptual introduction, and by a set of thematic essays. These essays explore whether the British approach can be extended to social and economic history, examine concepts of British and national identity, and debate whether the new approach has brought with it loss as well as gain.