Island Stories: Unravelling BritainVerso, 1998 - 391 pages Island Stories is an engrossing journey of discovery into the multiple meanings of national myths, their anchorage in daily life and their common sense of a people's destiny. Raphael Samuel reveals the palimpsest of British National Histories, offering a searching yet affectionate account of the heroes and villains, legends and foibles, cherished by the "four nations" that inhabit the British Isles. Raphael Samuel is interested by the fact that traditions can disappear no less abruptly than they were invented. How is it, her asks, that the Scots have lost interest in a British narrative of which they were once a central protagonist? Why is the celebration of "Britons" thriving today just as its object has become problematic? Island Stories marvelously conveys the mutability of national conceits. Samuel calls as witness a galaxy of authorities—Bede and Gerald of Barri, Macaulay and Stubbs, Shakespeare and Dickens, Lord Reith and Raymond Williams, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Benn—each of whom sought to renew the sense of national identity be means of an acute sense of the past. Island Stories is a luminous study of the way nations use their past to lend meaning to the present and future. This sequel to the widely acclaimed Theatres of Memory is as passionate, unexpected and enjoyable as its predecessor. |
Table des matières
The Idea of Nation | 3 |
Four Nations History | 21 |
Unravelling Britain | 41 |
The Imperial and the Domestic | 74 |
The Tower of London | 101 |
The Lost Gardens of Heligan | 125 |
North and South | 153 |
The Voice of Britain | 172 |
The Return of History | 214 |
The Legacy of R H Tawney | 233 |
The SDP and the New Middle Class | 256 |
Ancestor Worship | 272 |
The Tory Party at Prayer | 323 |
Mrs Thatcher and Victorian Values | 330 |
Reading the Runes | 351 |
| 371 | |
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ancient Annie Besant appearance architecture argued Britain British history Britons Broadcasting called Cambridge Celtic character Charles Christian Church Civil colonial Conservative Cromwell culture early economic Edinburgh eighteenth-century Empire England English essay favourite four nations garden Geoffrey of Monmouth historians History Workshop House ibid idea imperial industrial Ireland Irish Island Stories J.G.A. Pocock John Keir Hardie kind King Labour Party later less liberal Linda Colley literary Lord Margaret Thatcher medieval Milton modern moral movement myth narrative nineteenth century Nonconformist Nonconformity Norman North Oxford party's past perhaps political popular programme Puritan R.H. Tawney radical Raphael Samuel reform religion religious revival Revolution Royal Scotland Scottish seems social socialist society spirit Tawney Thatcher tion Tory Tower of London town trade union tradition Victorian Values village volume Wales Welsh William women writing