This collection is the work of seventeen scholars, including the editor. Most are from English universities, notably Oxford, but three represent French universities, and two, Canadian and American universities. Together, they cover almost every conceivable British reaction to the threat of French invasion, discussing how it affected politics, government, society, and culture. The authors will be identified below by the abbreviated names of their universities, to avoid repeating “University of.”

There is no bibliography, but the authors’ sources are evident in the notes, all of which feature printed primary sources of the period and use some items from national or local archives or both. The most frequently cited secondary works are Stuart Semmel, Napoleon and the British (New Haven, CT, 2004), Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation (New Haven, CT, 1992), and Richard Glover's Peninsular Preparation (Cambridge, 1963). The book is illustrated with the caricatures/cartoons of James Gillray, W. Holland, and others and with pictures of monuments in (or planned for) St. Paul's Cathedral.

Philip Harling (Kentucky) covers the fate of opposition leaders, who usually were not critical of the war with France but its conduct. He concludes that, typically, Wilberforce was driven into domestic exile in the 1790s but returned in Napoleon's reign to “lead the parliamentary assaults” on policy makers (36). Nicholas Rogers (York), Katrina Navickas (Oxford), and Jon Newman (Lambeth Archives) deal with units of citizen soldiers formed to repel Napoleon (chaps. 2, 3, and 4, respectively), the Sea Fencibles (to guard the coast), volunteers in Manchester and Liverpool, and finally London. The Sea Fencibles were generally formed after concessions by the government, such as posting naval vessels to guard commerce (54). Raising volunteers in Manchester and Liverpool seems not to have fanned fires of patriotism but to have exacerbated class and religious differences. In London the emphasis was on the protection of private property and controlling errant mobs—except during 1803–5, when Napoleon's Armée d’Angleterre, across the channel, promised immediate invasion. There was a “codification of the components of loyalism” (87) defining patriotism as loyalty to crown and church.

Charles John Fedorak (Victoria, Canada; chap. 5) does a good job of rehabilitating the Addington administration (in comparison to Pitt’s) in regard to war preparations (107). Jon Mee and Mark Crosby (Oxford; chap. 6) discuss the trial of the poet William Blake (1803) for sedition. He had harried a volunteer soldier from his garden and chased him to a local inn. The charges, brought in the name of the soldier, alleged that Blake had said “Damn the King” and that Napoleon could take England in an hour. Blake was acquitted. The authors feel that if his writings had been introduced, it might have gone otherwise. They also conclude that Blake forgot that “he was not the only person for whom Englishness and uniformity of opinion were incompatible” (122).

Alexandra Franklin (Bodleian Library; chap. 7) analyzes the cartoons/caricatures of 1803, perhaps overanalyzing Gillray's “St. George (III) Slaying the Dragon.” She sees the king's horse as about to tread on Britannia, which, she says, suggests that the war against France will be won “at the expense of British liberties” (134). Simon Burrows (Leeds; chap. 8) describes the evolution of the Black Legend of Napoleon, begun by exploiting his alleged atrocities in Egypt. He points out that it was not merely propaganda but tended to goad Bonaparte toward war and revenge, which William Cobbett and other hawks wanted. The legend was deeply resented by Napoleon since it presented him as a “vindictive and bloodthirsty” Corsican, with an unfaithful wife and a family with “voracious sexual proclivities.” He concludes, however, that the Black Legend faded before “a sneaking liberal admiration for Bonaparte” (152–53). Holger Hoock (Liverpool; chap. 9) also writes about propaganda but is especially effective in presenting St. Paul's Cathedral as the British equivalent of the French Panthéon—a center of monuments to Britain's heroes.

“Music and Politics” (chap. 10) has four sections by different authors. Mark Philp (Oxford; the editor) supplies an introduction that establishes a connection between music and politics and concludes that the songs and music of the period—anti-Napoleonic in 1803–5—have a mixed message before and after and supply a basis for an “alternative memory” of the period developed in the nineteenth century (178). Roz Southey (Newcastle) discusses the Newcastle volunteer band, which played for the troops’ reviews and gave concerts. Its music was various and not unreservedly patriotic. Thomas Thompson, for example, wrote to celebrate Nelson's victory of the Nile but inserted the lines “For with my father's life t’was bought / Unhappy orphan boy” (182–83). Caroline Jackson-Houlston (Oxford Brookes) writes about short-lived songs written to laud the heroes of the moment during 1802–4, including an ode to General Abercromby, who lost his life in Egypt, where his army captured the French army left there by Napoleon. Susan Wollenberg (Oxford) writes about music in Oxford during the Napoleonic Wars. She concludes that musicians there preserved the Holywell concerts, wrote for the volunteers, and played in their bands. Their compositions reflected the times and “the adaptable role of music within them” (197).

Annie Crépin and Vincent Cuvilliers (Artois) demonstrate (chap. 11) that the French in departments adjacent to the Channel were ambivalent about their perennial enemy. Officially, they blamed les Anglais for everything from conscription to economic woes, but privately liked them, and catered to British citizens interned in France. Renaud Morieux (Reims) finds (chap. 12) that many British citizens in commerce or industry cheerfully remained in France after 1803, under a law of the Ancien Régime that was designed to keep skilled workers in France and bring in foreign talent. He concludes that, despite the Revolution, the French resisted the idea of a nation, making far less distinction between themselves and foreigners than the British (235).

The title of this book is mildly misleading in that it fails to discuss actual resistance to Napoleon. However, that does not detract from its usefulness. Mark Philp is to be commended for bringing together the work of so many fine scholars in one volume.