Dr. Larry Siedentop was for three decades Fellow of Keble College and Faculty Lecturer in Political Thought at the University of Oxford. He is one of the most distinguished and penetrating political historians.

His publications include TOCQUEVILLE (Oxford University Press, 1994), and DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE (Penguin, 2000), which immediately became a classic essay on European Integration and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. It has been credited with influencing the convening of the European Constitutional Convention.

In 2004 he was invested with a CBE for services to political thought and higher education.

Britain and much of Europe is hypnotized by the struggle between integrationists and nation-starters, and is set to drift towards "unification" with little idea of its consitutional options.

In this text, Siedentop sets out the key issues for those who wish to construct a Europe that is prosperous, fair and free. Rejecting knee-jerk hostility to the idea of a "united states of Europe", Siedentop argues that the main enemy of freedom at national level is precisely the kind of unaccountable, dirigiste and bureaucratic government now developing in Brussels.

In its place, he champions a steady and openly debated progress towards sovereign democratic institutions which combines a Jeffersonian committment to democracy with a very British attachment to gradual reform and pragmatic government.