Dame Linda Jane Colley (born 13 September 1949 in Chester, England) is an expert on British, imperial and global history from 1700.
[4] Colley's first book, In Defiance of Oligarchy: The Tory Party 1714-1760 (1982), challenged the then dominant view by arguing that the Tory Party remained active and influential during its years out of power, exploring the consequences of this for the evolution of ideas, popular politics and political action in eighteenth century England and Wales.
[5] Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (1992), which won the Wolfson History Prize and has passed through five editions, investigated how – and how far – inhabitants of England, Scotland, and Wales came to see themselves as British over the course of the 18th and early 19th centuries.
[6] In 1998, Colley accepted a Senior Leverhulme Research Professorship in History at the London School of Economics.
This was named as one of the best books of 2007 by the New York Times,[7] and was a pioneer of the technique of using the life experiences of an individual to explore trans-national and trans-continental histories.
In 2014, and in advance of the referendum on Scottish independence, she was invited to deliver fifteen talks on BBC Radio 4 on the formation and fractures of the United Kingdom.