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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Timely, schlolarly,great fun., 10 April 2002
This is a superb book. David Milsted already enjoys an enviable reputation as a versatile and accomplished writer, able to turn his hand to a variety of genres and topics, and in this new volume he demonstrates these skills to the full. His subject is England and the English, and in his carefully crafted introductory chapter he explains the rationale for his book as well as setting out his personal stall. England is, as Milsted points out, the 'sleeping partner' in the United Kingdom, and while 'Britishness' has been deconstructed ad nauseum (with endless volumes on Scotland, Wales, Ireland, even Cornwall), England and the English have all too often been overlooked or forgotten.Milsted sets out to correct this ommission but this is no uncritical celebration of England and the English. Rather, this is a book that examines Englishness in all its infinite complexity, and it is Milsted's gift for judicious selection, juxtaposition and commentary that makes the anthology so successful. Milsted's lightness of touch, his sense of fun and his humanity show through on every page. But while this is a volume to amuse and to delight, to be kept close at hand on the coffee table, in the brief case or at the bedside, to be dipped into into whenever time permits, it is also a serious work of considerable scholarship that should be seen as a significant contribution to the current debate regarding identities in these islands. As the UK re-invents itself, with devolution to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and as the integrationist logic of the European Union asserts itself, so it is right to consider the nature of England and the English. And Milsted's triumph is that he does this so well. Few could hope to match his scope and learning, and the sheer breadth of this project is extraordinary, ranging as it does with apparent ease across an array of subjects from Wellington at Waterloo to Betjeman on sex. This book is a labour of love but is Milsted proud to be English? 'Of course not', he says, 'it's what I am, that's all. I might as well be proud to have blue eyes, or size 11 feet, and that would be silly'. But is he happy to be English? Here we receive an emphatic 'yes', and inviting us to enter an alladin's cave of literary gems, he tells us 'Here's why'. It is an invitation that no-one should refuse. Professor Philip Payton,
University of Exeter
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