Full Description
Brewer's Anthology of England and the English is an English 'parliament of voices' - from the patriotic and laudatory to the dissident and choleric. With attention focused as never before on England - the 'sleeping partner' of a loosening Union, and the definitions of 'England' and 'Britain' under increasing scrutiny, it offers a timely, thought-provoking and richly entertaining contribution to an intensifying debate about nationhood. Drawing on an impressively wide range of historical and contemporary sources - from Bede to Betjeman, from Langland to Larkin, from Palmerston to Pink Floyd, and from Shakespeare to Schama - and encompassing extracts from novels, poems, plays, works of history, films, TV programmes, newspapers, letter and diaries, Brewer's Anthology of England and the English lays bare the attitudes, tastes, obsessions and prejudices of the English as they have developed over 1500 years of history.
Contents
Questions of identity; "Dear Old, Bloody Old England"; the free born English; a touch of class; "A People Not Used to War"; religio Anglicorum; educated in the holidays; the English way of sex, and so on; playing the game; essentially English - an A to Z; postscript - whither England?
