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The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown

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Anna Keay

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“I mean, who even are the English? The descendants of the Germanic tribes? We're a great hotchpotch really, aren't we? A mishmash of Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Normans, et cetera, et cetera, to a complicatedly hybrid ancestry, barely united for centuries, and our borders always shifting. We're not a pure, homogenous race sprung from English soil, are we? When people talk about Englishness, I often get a whiff of frowsty Victorian velvet," she mused, articulating more expansively with her hands as she warmed to her theme. "It makes me think of paintings of King Alfred, Ivanhoe and Tennyson, people putting on dressing-up clothes to do archery, and William Morris tapestries. Perhaps Englishness is less about geography and historical dates and more about symbols and emotions? There are lots of tripwires and misty hollows between the lions and unicorns, aren't there? When you begin to think about what Englishness means--- and, by extension, English food--- it all starts to become rather precarious and complicated, doesn't it?”

PopulationSymbolicStereotypingHistory Of EnglandMother CountryEnglishnessEuropean Culture
Book:Good Taste
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“Their love of the Church was not, indeed, the effect of study or meditation. Few among them could have given any reason, drawn from Scripture or ecclesiastical history, for adhering to her doctrines, her ritual, and her polity; nor were they, as a class, by any means strict observers of that code of morality which is common to all Christian sects. But the experience of many ages proves that men may be ready to fight to the death, and to persecute without pity, for a religion whose creed they do not understand, and whose precepts they habitually disobey.”

ReligionChurch Of EnglandHistory Of EnglandGentry
Book:The History of England, from the Accession of James II — Volume 1
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“It is impossible to determine precisely how many Victorians were dependent on the drug, but since millions used it on a daily basis, the number must have been considerable. The pallor of many women in the middle and upper classes, their frequent lack of appetite, their tendency to faint and to spend considerable time alone in dark rooms, the ornate patterns of overupholstered and overfurnished rooms, the persistently closed, thick draperies - these are evidence of a national dependency that the restraints of Victorian society discouraged anyone from discussing.”

History Of England
Author:David Morrell
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