About the Book
Englishness has been hijacked by the right. This book will help take it back.
'A visionary book' Philip Pullman
'Essential and magnificent' George Monbiot
'Deft and wonderfully poetic' Grace Blakeley
The right have hijacked Englishness. Can it be reclaimed?
With the UK more divided than ever, England has re-emerged as a potent force in our culture and politics. But today the dominant story told about our country serves solely the interests of the right. The only people who dare speak of Englishness are cheerleaders for Brexit, exceptionalism and imperial nostalgia.
Yet there are other stories, equally compelling, about who we are- about the English people's radical inclusivity, their deep-rooted commitment to the natural world, their long struggle to win rights for all. These stories put the Chartists, the Diggers and the Suffragettes in their rightful place alongside Nelson and Churchill. They draw on the medieval writers and Romantic poets who reflect a more sustainable relationship with the natural world. And they include the diverse voices exploring our shared challenges of identity and equality today.
Here, Caroline Lucas delves into our literary heritage to explore what it can teach us about the most pressing issues of our time- whether the toxic legacy of Empire, the struggle for constitutional reform, or the accelerating climate emergency. And she sketches out an alternative Englishness- one that we can all embrace to build a greener, fairer future.
About the Author :
Caroline Lucas is the MP for Brighton Pavilion, and the UK's first Green Party MP. Elected to parliament in 2010, she also served as leader of the Green Party of England and Wales from 2008 to 2012 and as co-leader from 2016 to 2018. She was previously a Member of the European Parliament for ten years. She holds a PhD in English literature.
It was her passion for the English countryside that first inspired Caroline to think more deeply about the importance of place in our national life, and her love of literature that led her to respond to the rise of the populist Right by examining the more positive, inclusive stories of England and the English explored in this book.
Review :
This is not just an inspiring, nuanced and deeply literate book, but that rarest of things – a necessary one.
I love Caroline Lucas taking her own independent-minded journey into finding a better political future for England through its mythical and literary past.
Another England is a visionary book, and it’s also written in the clearest, plainest, and most eloquent prose . . . The author’s awareness of the complex fullness of our history is steeped in the language and the landscape, and she sees all the more clearly because of it. I was profoundly impressed.
Insightful, inspiring and highly readable, in this book Caroline Lucas invites us to ask ourselves a long overdue question: what type of country do we actually want to be?
Deft and wonderfully poetic . . . A fascinating and thoughtful reflection on one of the most fraught and important issues of our time.
Timely, passionate and perceptive . . . Another England tells a new story about England and Englishness, and sets out the possibility for a progressive politics of land, place and nation. This is vital reading.
Caroline Lucas is a shining light of integrity and values-based politics . . . This is a clarion call to define England and Englishness as our common ground, and a grounding for a transformation of politics and society.
An urgent, vital book for our fractured nation . . . By showing us the alternatives in our past, Caroline points to alternatives in our future . . . stories that must be heard more urgently than ever.
Essential and magnificent. This book fills a yawning gap, showing how we can create the progressive and inclusive sense of Englishness this country so urgently needs.
A progressive vision of the country’s literary and cultural history from the trailblazing MP . . . [Offers] much needed crumbs of hope for the future.
Uncomfortably honest and true . . . Another England is a book we need at this critical time when so much seems lost, when we have become so divided, and so hopeless.
Progressives have for too long treated the idea of an English national identity as an embarrassment, allowing the Right to create and exploit a narrow and chauvinistic version of collective belonging. In this vivid and invigorating book, Caroline Lucas shatters these distorting mirrors and reveals a much more interesting and complex picture of Englishness . . . Engaging, illuminating and ultimately uplifting.
Another England makes the compelling case that progressives need not shy away from talk of Englishness. Eloquent and persuasive, it offers a powerful new perspective on how we might make our national stories fit for the twenty-first century.
Caroline Lucas brilliantly draws together the narrative threads of our national stories to define some clear blue water between the British state and an England capable of being inclusive and forward looking, while at the same time bearing the weight of its own history.
We can make England brutal or beautiful. To understand the choice and how we make the right one together, read Another England, a wonderful and timely book on the country we can still be.
In Another England, Caroline Lucas sets out to start a conversation about ‘what it means to be English’. As such, it provides a remarkably inspiring foundation for such a conversation . . . I absolutely loved it.
Poetic and clear-sighted, romantic and analytical, principled and open-minded. There’s no other politician quite like Caroline Lucas . . . She's dug into the soil of England to find a progressive patriotic vision for the twenty-first century. What she discovers is profound, hopeful and radical. A brave and vital book.
Combines a love of English literature and its role in telling the story of England with what's gone wrong in politics . . . A very interesting book.
While patriotism might now provoke connotations of empire or Brexit, the former Green Party leader offers a different outlook by drawing on some more joyful aspects of the nation’s past. A perfect read for a divided Britain.
Not just another book by another politician; if only more departing MPs would write about Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton (1848) and John Wyndham’s The Kraken Wakes (1953) . . . Lucas’s strength as a writer—and perhaps also as a politician—is her fierce reasonableness.
Rather than toss out the national story, Lucas reads a more radical one between the lines . . . She cleverly deploys Elizabeth Gaskell, John Clare and Charles Dickens to demonstrate that a culture can be diverse and coherent, innovative and rooted; many stories told in one beautiful language. Blending art with political analysis, Lucas writes far more forcibly than authors of Left and Right who think a nation is defined entirely by its constitutional order, or that if the party they happen to support isn’t in power, England is lost for good.
A lucid insight into the ways the English might cultivate an inclusive ‘national story’. . . . Lucas’ intervention is not only timely, but also imperative . . . Lucas’ evaluation of how we might foster a progressive Englishness is a far more honest, balanced and just approach to nationhood than we see elsewhere in the mainstream political sphere . . . The creation of a collective English story, which stands to represent and benefit all, relies on an open conversation between multiple texts authored by writers of various identities and experiences of the nation. Another England is a valuable contribution to this vital discussion and makes clear the progressive change that can be achieved by championing an Englishness characterised by inclusiveness, solidarity and dissent.
Deftly marries the political and the literary . . . Another England is idealistic, naive and freewheeling, as urgent and lively books often are. I loved it.
Whatever your politics, former Green leader Caroline Lucas’s musings on Englishness and national identity are fascinating and provocative.
An alternative vision of England to the jingoistic and aggressive one conjured up by culture war squabbles . . . Another England is possible? Well, let’s hope she’s right.
