About the Book
'England' and 'Englishness' have received much attention in the twenty-first century, not least in debates over Brexit. About England explores how these concepts have been imagined since the 1960s, covering themes including politics, popular culture, geography, art, architecture, film and music.
David Matless navigates the country's complex cultural terrain, revealing the ways in which the national is entangled with the local, the regional, the European, the international, the imperial, the post-imperial and the global. He also addresses physical landscapes, from the village and country house to the urban, suburban and industrial, and reflects on the 'English modern'. About England uncovers the genealogy of recent cultural and political debates in England, showing how twenty-first-century concerns and anxieties have been moulded by events over the previous sixty years.
'Scholarly yet highly accessible...Matless teases out paradoxes and inconsistencies and chips away at such symbolic high (or low) points as the Falklands War, the 2012 London Olympics and, inevitably, the 2016 Brexit vote and its ramifications.' Literary Review (UK)
About the Author :
David Matless is professor of cultural geography at the University of Nottingham. His books include Landscape and Englishness, also published by Reaktion Books.
Review :
Few people know more about England and Englishness than David Matless. Read About England, and treat yourself to a magical mystery tour of all that you thought you knew.
Matless [organises] his material into six valuable chapters on the post-imperial decades from 1960 to the present, in which he argues that our assumptions 'concerning Englishness, place and landscape were significantly shaped in the 1960s and '70s' . . . Matless connects culture directly to the political. He is alive to issues of identity, particularly when times get tough and there is comfort in Anglo-Saxon, sunken-lane certainties of shire and hearth.
[A] thought-provoking exploration of English identity from the postwar period to the present day . . . in About England, Matless offers the viewpoint of a seasoned observer looking at how Englishness has played out over the last 70 years. It’s a fascinating tale . . . The book is a kaleidoscopic tour through the ways the myth of England has been articulated since the 1950s . . . About England is an engaging read, full of intriguing stories and cunningly chosen pictures. In a sense it is a book about memory; the memory of England.
Matless [makes] some telling connections between time and place. He has much of interest to say on the English suburb – a design for living that is distinctive (often in a positive way) from the urban sprawl of other countries.
As factual as it is sensitive as it is caring, About England enlightens the reader by way of idiosyncratic initiation, that is both analytical and majestic. A terrific read.
David's specialist subject is Englishness and he examines how this has been shaped over the last 60 years. He looks at Englishness through our cultural icons such as John Betjemen, Reginald Perrin and David Bowie and analyses how the national identity is entangled with the local, the regional, the European, the international and the global.
Critiques of Englishness take myriad forms. Matless’s version is a scholarly yet highly accessible attempt to frame various concepts of ‘England’ and ‘the English’ against the backdrop of the past sixty years, which is more or less the author’s own lifetime. Matless teases out paradoxes and inconsistencies and chips away at such symbolic high (or low) points as the Falklands War, the 2012 London Olympics and, inevitably, the 2016 Brexit vote and its ramifications.
David Matless sets out to examine the England that’s present in the living memory of millions of people by delving into commentary of what has been said about it over the past 60 or so years and bringing to life places deemed to reveal something about the nature and character of the country. He seeks to open up the English question and explain the complex nature of English identity, from the early 1960s to the opening years of our current decade.
David Matless has produced a fine sequel to his highly influential book, Landscape and Englishness (1998), which examined the development of English identity during the early 20th century. About England is a more personal take on the past 60 years, that is, during his own life. Matless deftly weaves together the cultural markers and events that he sees as constructing the social history of post World War Two England . . . About England is a compelling insight into the national psyche and culture.
What does “England” mean today? This wide-ranging book offers a range of fascinating entry-points into this vexed question . . . this is no doubt a richly-detailed and contextualized study. Given the importance of visual sources to Matless, it is excellent to read a book that is so fully-illustrated . . . Matless’s broad chronological coverage is undoubtedly a real strength: this is a genuinely contemporary history, written both as a reflection on events in very recent years and to engage with contemporary concerns.
In this masterly new book, David Matless unravels the complex weave of "Englishness" in its continual twists and turns over the last sixty years. In so doing, he vividly identifies polarities, fear and pride, the pastoral and the modern, and many more, while highlighting the intense, even baffling, cultural connection between landscape and nation that lies at the heart of it all. This is an important, stimulating book.
Wide-ranging and astonishingly erudite, About England offers a magisterial analysis of the varying ways in which English identity has been celebrated, debated, and reflected upon between the Second World War and the present. Thoughtful, probing and richly documented, the book is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the meaning and significance of contemporary languages of Englishness.
