England, Their England

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England, their England, a now forgotten bestseller, was one of a series of travelogues produced by survivors of the First World War during the 1930s in a country recovering its sense of purpose and identity; unusually, in this case it took the form of an autobiographical novel. The book popped up in my GR recommendations because I recently read “Three Men in a Boat” and this indeed has a very similar type of humour. Pen and pencil inscription to front free endpaper, with water drops and a few small nicks along text block edge. The title alludes to the refrain "England, My England" of the poem "Pro Rege Nostro" by William Ernest Henley.

Subversively, against this Macdonnell places “bright young things” who are still partying, still determinedly having fun as a reaction to the deaths of the Great War. All round the cricket field small parties of villagers were patiently waiting for the great match to begin—a match against gentlemen from London is an event in a village—and some of them looked as if they had been waiting for a good long time.It is slightly tongue in cheek, but well worth the reading now with so many people eager to show that our view of history is wrong.

It was still fun to read though and that is not the case for many topical books written almost 90 years previously. The cricket field itself was a mass of daisies and buttercups and dandelions, tall grasses and purple vetches and thistle-down, and great clumps of dark-red sorrel, except, of course, for the oblong patch in the centre—mown, rolled, watered—a smooth, shining emerald of grass, the Pride of Fordenden, the Wicket. Macdonell also wrote six mystery novels under the name 'Neil Gordon', one of them in collaboration with Milward Kennedy. There are chapters that focus on a single aspect of English life including The Dinner Party, The Cricket Match, The Golf Club, Parliament, Theatre, The Hunt, The Pub for example.Although the rest of his books have been largely forgotten, several of them earned accolades during his lifetime. Banished from his native Scotland by a curious clause in his father’s will, Donald Cameron moves to London and decides to conduct a study of the English people; a strange race who, he is told, have built an entire national identity around a reverence for team spirit and the memory of Lord Nelson . It is regarded as one of the classics of English humour and is much-loved by readers for its evocation of England between the wars.

I can’t say this book gives a good idea of the “real” England but more, a picture of England as a “type”: the cricketers, the fox-hunters, the footballers, the rugby-players in mud and cold rain, the diplomats, the country “gaffers”, the city slickers, the parliamentarians, the factory-hands, the Yorkshiremen who are good at engineering, the land-owners, the village dwellers. I put this on my to-be-read list sometime last year and promptly forgot about it, so when I came across it again, I wasn't quite sure why I was reading it, but what I found was a lovely, gentle, whimsical satire which is well worth a read. Shakespeare Pollock sprang into the vortex with a last ear-splitting howl of victory and grabbed it off the seat of the wicket-keeper's trousers. Set in 1920s England, the book takes the form of a travel memoir by a young Scotsman who has been invalided away from the Western Front, "Donald Cameron", whose father's will forces him to reside in England. England, Their England is an affectionately satirical inter-war comic novel first published in 1933.Ostensibly about a scotsman coming to London to observe the English in preparation for writing a book about them, it is actually a lovely selection of glimpses into a bygone lifestyle of ill prepared diplomats, country house weekends and sport in its various guises amongst other things. Fun Folio Society edition of MacDonell's gently comic novel depicting England (and village cricket) between the wars. Here and there are sprinkled reminders of the cataclysmic 14-18 war but there are no indications of the worse one coming in a few short years.

You can unsubscribe from our list at any point by changing your preferences, or contacting us directly. A review of an amateur production in Thursley, printed in The Times in January 1930, notes that he played his role with "immense gusto" which was "vastly to the taste of the audience". Which means we do not get the humor, those of us that live outside the Anglo- Saxon world and are unfamiliar with its attitudes - even if we have read the chef d’oeuvre Anglo-Saxon Attitudes by magical Angus Wilson http://realini.A lot of the time, he has no idea what is going on, what his English acquaintances are talking about, or why they are doing what they're doing, but he struggles on as best he can. An important character is Mr Hodge, a caricature of Sir John Squire (poet and editor of the London Mercury), while the cricket team described in the book's most famous chapter is a representation of Sir John's Cricket Club – the Invalids – which survives today.