Product 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1168397 in Books
• Published on: 2003-07-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 532 pages

About the Author
David Milsted has compiled a number of quotations and general reference titles, including The Cassell Dictionary of Regrettable Quotations (1999) and The Chronicle of the 20th Century in Quotations (2000)..

Customer Reviews

Timely, schlolarly,great fun.
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

Fascinating, informative and unputdownable. I'm impressed.
This is the most entertaining and informative collection of writings I have seen. Everything from Churchill's "We'll fight them on the beaches" speech to the lyrics of Ian Drury's "Billerickey Dickey" via the Punk Hamlet.I keep my copy on the kitchen table and everyone who comes in can't seem to resist picking it up and saying "hey, listen to this" and reading aloud. I would seriously and genuinly recommend it as THE present this Christmas for every difficult and not so difficult relative.

A cornucopia of cultural insight
Brewer's Anthology of England and the English is a remarkable book. Always suspicious of the political baggage that often accompanies a preoccupation with national and cultural identity, I approached it with some suspicion. Ultimately, the book communicates great affection for its subject, but it does not peddle in the discredited stereotypes of a narrow social class that purport to be English. Rather, it is an assiduously researched, thaught-provoking, democratic and very intelligently organised tour de force of cultural exploration.

I enjoyed particularly the chapter on education. Whether it's Fielding's hard-nosed cynicism: "Public schools are the nurseries of all vice and immorality.", the delight of Laurie Lee's "Cider with Rosie" or the pathos of Barry Hines' "A Kestrel for a Knave", here are the voices of all the protagonists and victims that have shaped English society today.

It is this inclusiveness that is the book's greatest strength. Great historical commentators jostle for space with lesser known gems to weave a rich tapestry of cultural insight. The book unearths the myriad components, many of them very unEnglish at first sight, that comprise our distictively troubled sense of national self. Brewer's Anthology probably gets as close as it is possible to get to defining the undefinable and giving shape to the shapeless. David Milsted is to be applauded for a remarkable feat.