Preface: The Importance of Not Being Earnest
1Kate Fox, Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour, revised edition, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 2014, pp. 83–84.
2Ibid., p. 85.
3Ibid., p. 87.
4‘Theresa May should have taken my father’s advice on Brexit,’ by Donald Trump Jr, Daily Telegraph, 19 March 2019.
1.The Pleasures of Self-Pity
1Leigh Hunt, Selections from the English Poets, Philadelphia, 1856, p. 245.
2Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 2, London, 1872, p. 591.
3Colin Wilson in Going into Europe – Again? A Symposium, Encounter, July 1971, pp. 18–32.
4Arnold Toynbee, ‘Saving England’, Encounter, January 1962.
5James Morris, ‘Patriotism’, Encounter, January 1962, p. 17.
6Clive Archer, The European Union, Routledge, 2008, p. 24.
7Matthew Connolly (ed.), The Selected Works of Cyril Connolly, Vol. 1, Picador, London, 2002, p. 343.
8Encounter, January 1962, p. 18.
9Going into Europe – Again? A Symposium, Encounter, June 1971, pp. 3–17.
10Ibid., pp. 18–32.
11Ibid.
12Richard Weight, Patriots: National Identity in Britain 1940–2000, Macmillan, London, 2002, p. 521.
13Encounter, June 1971, pp. 3–17.
14Linda Colley, Captives: Britain, Empire and the World, 1600–1850, Jonathan Cape, London, 2002, p. 376.
15White Paper, The United Kingdom and the European Communities, July 1971, p. 2.
16Jean Rook, Daily Express, January 1, 1973.
17Encounter, July 1971, pp. 18–32.
18Ibid.
19Ibid., pp. 3–17.
20Ibid.
21White Paper, 1971, p. 17.
22Encounter, June 1971, pp. 3–17.
23Ibid.
24Ibid., pp. 18–32.
25Weight, Patriots, p. 46.
26Francis Wheen, Hoo-hahs and Passing Frenzies: Collected Journalism, 1991–2001, Atlantic Press, London, 2002, p. 92.
27Francis Wheen, Strange Days Indeed: The Golden Age of Paranoia, Fourth Estate, London, pp. 51–2.
28Weight, Patriots, p. 514.
29Arnold Toynbee, ‘Saving England’, Encounter, January 1962, pp. 7–8.
30Camilla Schofield, Enoch Powell and the Making of Postcolonial Britain, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2013, pp. 8, 231.
31Jane Gardam, Old Filth, Abacus, London, 2005, p. 56.
2.SS-GB: Life in Occupied England
1Len Deighton, SS-GB, HarperCollins, London, 2009, p. 16.
2Robert Harris, Fatherland, Arrow Books, London, 2012, p. 14.
3Anthony Barnett, The Lure of Greatness, Unbound, London, 2017, p. 278.
4Jonathan Wright and Steven Casey (eds), Mental Maps in the Era of Détente and the End of the Cold War, 1968–91, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2015, p. 188.
5Harris, Fatherland, p. 134.
6Ibid., pp. 297–8.
7Ibid., pp. 74–5.
8Ibid., p. 288.
9Ibid., p. 163.
10Roger Helmer, tweet, 1 August 2018.
11‘Bruges groupies rally against ‘“Eurocracy”’, by David Usborne, Independent, Saturday 22 April 1989, p. 12.
12Spectator, 14 July 1990.
13‘Beleaguered Ridley expected to quit’, by Anthony Bevins, Independent, Friday 13 July 1990, p. 1.
14‘Trail of disaster and indiscretion’, by Peter Jenkins, ibid.
15‘Margaret lifts the lid off her larder’, Daily Express, 29 November 1974.
16Margaret Thatcher, Speech to Conservative Rally at Cheltenham, 3 July 1982, Margaret Thatcher Foundation, https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104989
17Robert Saunders, Yes to Europe! The 1975 Referendum and Seventies Britain, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2018, p. 19.
18Mark Baimbridge (ed.) The 1975 Referendum on Europe, Vol. 1, Reflections of the Participants, Imprint Academic, Exeter, 2007, p. 14.
19Saunders, Yes to Europe!, p. 16.
20Ibid., pp. 25–7.
21Quoted in Camilla Schofield, Enoch Powell and the Making of Postcolonial Britain, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2013, p. 1.
22Matthew Connolly (ed.), The Selected Works of Cyril Connolly, Vol. 1, Picador, London, 2002, p. 333.
23Andrew Gilligan, ‘The EU: so where did it all go wrong?’, Daily Telegraph, 30 December 2012.
24Boris Johnson, ‘My vision for a bold, thriving Britain enabled by Brexit’, Daily Telegraph, 15 September 2017.
25John Newsinger, ‘The Roast Beef of Old England’, International Journal of Health Services, Vol. 27, No. 2, pp. 243–6, 1997.
26‘Germans urged to call truce in “mad cow” war’, by Dennis Newson, Daily Mail, Wednesday 7 January 1990, p. 10.
27‘A small Somerset town finds itself at war with Germany, Beef Wellington at its Waterloo’, Daily Express, 22 May 1996, p. 5.
28Daily Express, 25 April 1996, p. 24.
29‘Sauerkraut’, The Times, 26 March 1996, p. 18.
30Newsinger, ‘The Roast Beef of Old England’.
31‘Battle lines drawn for new beef war’, by Sean Poulter, Daily Mail, 5 August 1999.
32Daily Mail, 7 August 1999, pp. 12–13.
33‘Is there life outside?’, by Michael Gove, The Times, 14 June 1996, p. 20.
34Simon Heffer, Daily Mail, 23 December 1995, p. 11.
35White Paper, 1971, pp. 4–5.
36Ibid., pp. 7, 15.
37‘Continent is punishing us just because we’re British’, by Bernard Connolly, Daily Express, 25 April 1996.
38Encounter, June 1971, pp. 3–17.
39Richard Weight, Patriots: National Identity in Britain 1940–2000, Macmillan, London, 2002, p. 513.
40Owen Sheers, Resistance, Faber e-book, 2011, p. 4.
41Ibid., pp. 43, 50, 54, 121, 122.
42C. J. Sansom, Dominion, Pan Books, London, 2013, pp. 41, 697–8.
43Daily Mail, front page, 4 February 2017.
44Arron Banks, The Bad Boys of Brexit: Tales of Mischief, Mayhem & Guerrilla Warfare in the EU Referendum Campaign, Biteback, London, 2016, p. 81.
45Edward St Aubyn, Some Hope, Picador, London, 2012, p. 166.
46Express online, Friday 17 November 2017.
47Telegraph online, 6 November 2017.
48Sun online, 16 November 2017.
49Express online, 14 March 2018.
50Daniel Hannan, tweet, 28 February 2018.
51Ibid., 5.08 p.m., 29 July 2018.
52Nick Boles, Telegraph online, 1 September 2018.
53Daily Telegraph, 21 September 2018.
54Ibid., 28 March 2018.
55Ibid., 19 July 2018.
56Guardian, 20 September 2018.
57Observer, 23 September 2018.
58The Times, 21 September 2018.
3.The Triumph of the Light Brigade
1‘Ship found in Arctic 168 years after doomed Northwest Passage attempt’, by Paul Watson, Guardian, 12 September 2016.
2Stephanie Barczewski, Heroic Failure and the British, Yale University Press, London, 2016, p. 59.
3Ibid., p. 62.
4Ibid., p. 65.
5Ibid., p. 71.
6Sherard Osborn, Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal, London, 1852, p. 210.
7Barczewski, p. 4.
8Robert Falcon Scott, Scott’s Last Expedition, London, 2011, p. 426.
9Ibid., p. 100.
10George Orwell, ‘England Your England’ in The Lion and The Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius, in Essays, Everyman’s Library, Knopf, New York, 2002, p. 296.
11Ibid.
12Kenneth Mahood cartoon, Punch, 6 February 1974, p. 212.
13‘Britain stands alone again, celebrating the myth of Dunkirk’, by Robert Harris, Sunday Times, 27 May 1990.
14‘Fish, ferries and Agincourt’, The Economist, 23 August 1980, p. 58.
15‘Island nation’, by Brian Groom, Financial Times, 20 April 2010.
16‘We Shall Not Be Stopped’, by Tom Hutchinson, Daily Star, 20 April 2010.
17Sunday Express, 1 April 2012, p. 9.
18‘Jeremy Hunt warns EU a bad Brexit deal will stir Britain’s “Dunkirk Spirit”’, Daily Telegraph, 30 September 2018.
19Quoted in Barczewski, Heroic Failure and the British, pp. 4–5.
20Jane Gardam, Old Filth, Abacus, London, 2005, p. 242.
21‘Ministers aim to build “empire 2.0” with African Commonwealth’, by Sam Coates and Marcus Leroux, The Times, 6 March 2017.
22Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Chris Skidmore and Elizabeth Truss, Britannia Unchained: Global Lessons for Growth and Prosperity, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2012, p. 1.
23Ibid., p. 10.
24Ibid., p. 61.
25Ibid., p. 89.
26Ibid., p. 10.
27Ibid., p. 59.
28Harold D. Clarke, Matthew Goodwin and Paul Whiteley, Brexit: Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2017, pp. 175–6.
29Edward St Aubyn, Mother’s Milk, Open City Books, New York, 2005, pp. 147, 162.
30C. J. Sansom, Dominion, Pan Books, London, 2013, pp. 9, 30, 686.
31‘Lord Nigel Lawson hopes Irish Republic realises its “mistake” and rejoins UK following Brexit’, 24 February 2016, https://www.newstalk.com/Lord-Nigel-Lawson-hopes-Irish-Republic-realises-its-mistake-and-rejoins-UK-following-Brexit
32Irish Times, 14 July 2018.
33Quoted in Camilla Schofield, Enoch Powell and the Making of Postcolonial Britain, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2013, p. 7.
34Ibid., p. 7.
35Ibid., p. 230.
36Ibid., p. 20.
37Ibid., p. 209.
38http://www.euronews.com/2017/11/09/brexit-the-uk-would-be-an-eu-colony
39https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-politics-42376559/jacobrees-mogg-uk-must-not-be-eu-colony-after-brexit, 16 Dec 2017.
40Daniel Hannan, tweet, 1 May 2018.
41‘Triumph of the Light Brigade’, by Simon Edge, Daily Express, 23 October 2004, pp. 52–3.
4.A Pint of Beer, a Packet of Prawn Cocktail Flavour Crisps and Two Ounces of Dog Shit, Please
1Boris Johnson, Friends, Voters, Countrymen: Jottings on the Stump, HarperCollins, London, 2002, p. 7.
2Ibid., pp. 14–15.
3‘Johnson’s “piccaninnies” apology’, Guardian, 23 January 2008.
4Camilla Schofield, Enoch Powell and the Making of Postcolonial Britain, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2013, p. 233.
5Michael Gove, ‘Is there life outside?’, The Times, 14 June 1996, p. 20.
6Edward St Aubyn, Some Hope, Picador, London, 2012, p. 4.
7George Orwell, ‘The English People’, in Essays, Everyman’s Library, Knopf, New York, 2002, p. 610.
8Thompson’s essay is transcribed at https://againstreactionblog.wordpress.com/2017/08/28/going-into-europe-an-essay-by-ep-thompson-1975/
9‘Eurobeer Menace’, Daily Mirror, 25 June 1973.
10‘Your Shopping Basket and the Market’, Daily Mirror, 30 May 1975.
11Richard Weight, Patriots: National Identity in Britain 1940–2000, Macmillan, London, 2002, p. 514.
12‘That Tory “have cake and eat it” Brexit strategy explained in all its humiliating glory’, by Dan Bloom, Daily Mirror, 29 November 2016.
13‘We’ll Have Our Cake and Eat It’, by Tom Newton-Dunn, Sun, 1 October 2016.
14‘Boris Johnson’s top 50 quotes’, by Alice Audley, Daily Telegraph, 18 June 2014.
15Stanley Johnson, Stanley, I Resume: Further Recollections of an Exuberant Life, Biteback, London, 2014.
16Richard Weight, Patriots: National Identity in Britain 1940–2000, Macmillan, London, 2002, p. 505.
17‘Boris in row over Jamie remarks’, BBC News, 3 October 2006.
18Robin Young, ‘MEPs rally to defend flavoured crisps’, The Times, 29 April 1991, p. 2.
19‘The nasty taste of Brussels directives’, Daily Mail, 30 April 1991.
20‘I’m no longer Nasty, but please stop lying about Nice by Boris Johnson’, Daily Telegraph, 17 October 2002.
21Boris Johnson, Friends, Voters, Countrymen, pp. 218–19.
22Ibid., p. 37.
23‘Great-uncle Ernest Thesiger’s army camp’, letter by John Thesiger, Guardian, 27 April 2014.
24Edward St Aubyn, Bad News, Picador, London, 2012, p. 41.
25Weight, Patriots, p. 724.
26‘Hunger for beef is a part of British pride’, by Ross Benson, Daily Express, 30 March 1996, p. 11.
27Christopher Hope, Daily Telegraph, 5 June 2018.
28Jacob Rees-Mogg, ‘My nanny made me the man I am’, Daily Telegraph, 14 March 2014.
29Alan Bennett, Keep On Keeping On, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2016, p. 193.
30Boris Johnson, Friends, Voters, Countrymen, p. 20.
31Nigel Farage, tweet, 9 November 2017.
32https://www.petebrown.net/2014/06/16/why-faragesfoaming-pint-is-testamen/
33Farming for the next generation: Secretary of State Michael Gove sets out his vision on the future of our farming industry at the Oxford Farming Conference 2018, published by DEFRA, 5 January 2018.
34‘If your child is fat then you are a bad parent’, by Julia Hartley-Brewer, Daily Telegraph, 10 November 2015.
35Tower Hamlets Police @MPSTowerHam, tweet, 3.10 p.m., 20 February 2018.
36@GMPWhitefield, tweet, 10.49 p.m., 20 February 2018.
5.Sadopopulism
1Independent, 27 March 2017.
2Andrew Gimson, Boris: The Adventures of Boris Johnson, Simon & Schuster, London, pp. 111–12.
3‘Grundy Banned, Today team accused’, Guardian, 3 December 1976.
4Great Interviews of the 20th Century, Guardian booklet no. 8, 2007, p. 10. The interview was broadcast live on 1 December 1976.
5Arron Banks, The Bad Boys of Brexit: Tales of Mischief, Mayhem & Guerrilla Warfare in the EU Referendum Campaign, Biteback, London, 2016, p. 3.
6Malcolm McLaren in Great Interviews of the 20th Century, Guardian booklet no. 8, 2007, p. 15.
7Ibid., p. 13.
8Jon Savage, Symbols Clashing Everywhere: Punk Fashion 1975–1980 in Punk: Chaos to Couture, Metropolitan Museum, New York, 2013, p. 26.
9Ibid., p. 22.
10Ibid., pp. 21–2.
11Ibid., p. 26.
12Malcolm McLaren in Great Interviews of the 20th Century, p. 14.
13‘Rusholme Ruffians’, the Smiths, from Meat is Murder, 1985.
14Nigel Farage, The Purple Revolution: The Year that Changed Everything, Biteback, London, 2016, p. 23.
15Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom, Bodley Head, London, 2018, p. 273.
16Harold D. Clarke, Matthew Goodwin and Paul Whiteley, Brexit: Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 186.
17Banks, The Bad Boys of Brexit, p. 79.
18Edward St Aubyn, Bad News, Picador, London, 2012, p. 95.
19Craig Oliver, Unleashing Demons, the Inside Story of Brexit, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 2016, p. 100.
20Richard Evans, ‘“One man who made history” by another who seems just to make it up: Boris on Churchill’, New Statesman, 13 November 2014.
21Treasury Committee oral evidence: The economic and financial costs and benefits of UK membership of the EU, HC 499, 23 March 2016.
22Gimson, Boris: The Adventures of Boris Johnson, p. 121.
23George Orwell, Essays, Everyman’s Library, Knopf, New York, 2002, p. 149.
24Ibid., p. 173.
25Farage, The Purple Revolution, p. 26.
26Peter Kellner, ‘If so many Britons support freedom of movement, why doesn’t Theresa May?’, Guardian, 10 August 2018.
27Daily Mail, 3 November 2016.
28Daily Mirror, 17 May 2017.
29Daily Express, 9 November 2016.
30Ibid., 11 August 2017.
31Ibid., 27 July 2018.
32Daily Telegraph, 5 October 2016.
33The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.
6.The Twilight of the Gods: English Dreamtime
1Edward St Aubyn, Never Mind, Picador, London, 2012, p. 17.
2Jonathan Sumption, Cursed Kings: The Hundred Years War, Vol. IV, Faber & Faber, London, 2015, p. 374.
3Gary Taylor, John Jowett and Terri Bourus and Gabriel Egan (eds), The New Oxford Shakespeare, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016, p. 1544.
4Edward St Aubyn, Some Hope, Picador, London, 2012, pp. 126, 146.
5‘UK is a VASSAL state!’, Daily Express, 12 July 2018.
6‘Boris Johnson’s resignation speech in full: “It’s not too late to save Brexit”’, Daily Telegraph, 19 July 2018.
7‘Putin signals he will not back down over Ukraine’, by Tom Parfitt, Daily Telegraph, 18 December 2014.
8Daily Express, 8 February 2018.
9Daily Telegraph, 23 August 2017.
10‘The Tory Three Brexiteers brandish boasts and the best gags’, by Dan Roberts, Guardian, 3 October 2017.
11Jonathan Sumption, Trial by Battle: The Hundred Years War, Vol. I, Faber & Faber, London, 1990, p. ix.
12Ibid., p. 302.
13Jonathan Sumption, Trial by Fire: The Hundred Years War, Vol. II, Faber & Faber, 1999, p. 494.
14Ibid., p. 11.
15Ibid., p. 438.
16Ibid., p. 286.
17Ibid., p. 434.
18James Morris, Encounter, January 1962, p. 7.
19Richard Weight, Patriots: National Identity in Britain, 1940–2000, Macmillan, London, p. 491.
20Paul Readman, Storied Ground: Landscape and the Shaping of English National Identity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2018, p. 34.
21Full Text: Boris Johnson’s Brexit Speech, Spectator, 14 February 2018.
22Arthur Koestler, Going into Europe – Again? A Symposium, Encounter, June 1971, pp. 3–17.
23James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg, The Sovereign Individual, Touchstone, New York, 1999, p. 17.
24Ibid., p. 21.
25Ibid., p. 329.
26Ibid., p. 32.
27Ibid., p. 19.
28Ibid., p. 20.
29Ibid., pp. 196–7.
30Ibid., p. 256.
31Ibid., pp. 256–7.
32Ibid., pp. 402–3.
33Ibid., p. 129.
34Ibid., p. 131.
35‘Why Silicon Valley billionaires are prepping for the apocalypse in New Zealand’, by Mark O’Connell, Guardian, 15 February 2018.
36Irish Times, 13 June 2018; 23 July 2018.
37George Orwell, Essays, Everyman’s Library, Knopf, New York, 2002, p. 164.
7.The Sore Tooth and the Broken Umbrella
1Sarah Vine, ‘Gosh, I suppose I better get up!’, Daily Mail, 29 June 2016.
2‘The Spanish Job. Veteran actor Sir Michael Caine hails Brexit as The Sun tells Spain: “We only want to blow the bloody señors off”’, Sun online, 6 April 2017.
3Encounter, January 1962, p. 9.
4James Shapiro, 1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear, Faber & Faber, London, 2015, pp. 48–9.
5Richard Weight, Patriots: National Identity in Britain, 1940–2000, Macmillan, London, p. 731.
6George Orwell, Essays, Everyman’s Library, Knopf, New York, 2002, p. 608.
7Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), England and Its Two Unions: The anatomy of a nation and its discontents, 2013, p. 7.
8Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), The Dog that Finally Barked: England as an emerging political community, 2012, p. 19.
9Ibid., p. 20.
10Ibid., p. 14.
11Ibid., p. 21.
12Ibid., p. 31.
13Ibid., p. 34.
14Michael Kenny, The Politics of English Nationhood, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014, pp. 20–21.
15Quoted in Anthony Barnett, The Lure of Greatness, Unbound, London, 2017, p. 115.
16IPPR, England and Its Two Unions, p. 23.
17Barnett, The Lure of Greatness, p. 123.
18IPPR, The Dog that Finally Barked, p. 16; England and Its Two Unions, p. 18.
19IPPR, England and Its Two Unions, p. 19.
20Ibid., p. 22.
21Harold D. Clarke, Matthew Goodwin and Paul Whiteley, Brexit: Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 167.
22Jan Eichhorn, http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/the-black-box-of-brexit-identification-with-englishness-is-the-bestclue/ 31 March 2018.
23IPPR, England and Its Two Unions, p. 8.
24Frank E. Vandiver, ‘The Confederate Myth’, in Patrick Gerster and Nicholas Cords (eds), Myth and South History: The Old South, Rand McNally, Chicago, 1974, p. 149.
25Orwell, Essays, p. 613.
26Matthew Connolly (ed.), The Selected Works of Cyril Connolly, Vol. 1, Picador, London, p. 344.
27Quoted in Weight, Patriots, p. 40.
28Orwell, Essays, pp. 613, 609.
29Ibid., p. 610.
30John B. Keane, Self-Portrait, Dublin and Cork, Mercier Press, 1964, pp. 42–3.
31David McCrone and Frank Bechhofer, Understanding National Identity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2015, p. 175.
32Jeremy Seabrook, ‘An English Exile, in Granta 56: What Happened to Us?, Winter 1996, p. 188.
33Robert Taylor, Major, Haus Publishing, London, 2016, p. 19.
34Edward St Aubyn, Some Hope, Picador, London, 2012, p. 200.
Postscript: A Special Place in Hell
1‘Ready, aim, fire! May’s troops wage battle of Downing Street’, by Tim Shipman and Caroline Wheeler, Sunday Times, 20 January 2019.
2BBC News Interview with Mark Francois, 25 January 2019, 12:09 p.m.
3Irish Times, 31 January 2019.
4Express online, ‘We are at WAR’: Brexiteer warns EU is ‘intent on Britain’s Brexit DEFEAT’, 31 January 2019.
5Defence in Global Britain, Transcript, https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/defence-in-global-britain.
6Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 14 February 2019.
7The Labour Party, Theresa May’s Failed Brexit Plan, September 2018, p. 4.
8Telegraph, 17 January 2019.
9DailyMail.com, 29 September 2019.
10‘Brexit is a national crisis, former diplomats tell Theresa May,’ Guardian, 14 February 2019.
11Kate Fox, Watching the English, revised edition, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 2014, p. 88.
12Channel 4 News, 9 February 2019.