Cultura y Civilización Inglesa – FAHCE-UNLP

Burke, Peter & Pallares-Burke, Maria Lúcia (2016) “Quem sao os ingleses?” Os Ingleses. Sao
Paulo: Contexto, 16-45.Traducción interna de la cátedra.

Who are the English? What are they like? Tolerant or prejudiced, gentle or aggressive, quiet
or talkative? How do they imagine themselves and how do others see them?

NATIONAL CHARACTER?

It is often said it is the study of the "national character" that can answer these questions. Many
people, from within and outside England, believe in the existence of a "national character," by
analogy to the individual character. In 1951, for example, the Festival of Britain, organized by
the government as part of its postwar recovery program, evoked the "British character,"
identifying the love of nature and the home as something specifically British, as British as
"British eccentricity and humor." In 2003, an official government report on citizenship still
used the formula "national character". From the beginning of the 18th century, the character
of John Bull, a simple,fat, honest, frank and carnivorous man from the countryside,
personifies this character. The creation of this type coincides with the time when the British
steak became synonymous with the commercial affluence of the British, a trait that, alongside
their love of freedom, would distinguish them from their neighbors and enemies, the French.
Among these, the English came to be known as "les rosbifs" ("the roast beef").

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The symbolic figure of the British John Bull was several times used in cartoons and political
campaigns.. The illustration shows him summoning volunteers in World War I.

Some foreigners, in turn, tend to characterize the English as reserved, hypocritical, self-
satisfied, unsociable and uninterested in sex. A Dutch historian and university professor, who
lived in England in the 1920s and 1930s, described them in these terms: "rude, ignorant,
narrow-minded, predictable, stubborn, pragmatic, quiet, and trustworthy."

STEREOTYPES
In contrast, other foreigners, such as the Anglophile Brazilian Gilberto Freyre, believe that
such descriptions are stereotyped. Freyre, troubled by the Brazilian view of the English,
sought in his 1948 book, The English in Brazil, to combat what he called "half-truths."
Defending them against those who accused them of being irreparably hypocritical,
ethnocentric, dry, insular, and greedy, he argued that those who thus qualified them gave the
public a completely distorted view. It could easily be dismantled by careful study of the many
Englishmen who established themselves in Brazil during the nineteenth century and who were
exemplary in honesty, altruism, cosmopolitanism, and so on.
Stereotypes such as these, providing typical English or English images, may not be
completely false but, at best, they are partial, as are all stereotypes which, by simplifying the
complexity of things, exaggerate aspects of reality and end up being at best "half-truths".
Almost all the traits attributed to the English have already been criticized as being just myth.
Moreover, if we consider that these supposedly general traits would concern nearly 64 million
people - the population of Britain in 2015 - it is obvious that a very high degree of variety
should be considered in any description.
Taking into account these qualifications and precautions on the idea of "national character,"
the generalizations made here are nothing more than relative. As in any other nation, they
resemble less to one individual and more to a family, in which different personalities coexist
and collide, despite all family similarities. And, being relative generalizations, they depend to
a considerable degree on the position of the observer. What may surprise Brazilian visitors,
for example, may not be surprising to a Swede, and vice versa.

THE CHANGING ENGLISH

In any case, it must be remembered that major cultural and social changes, caused, among
other things, by massive migration after World War II, are rendering some of the traditional
stereotypes obsolete. The idea of the phlegmatic English, for example, which could have its
part of truth in the nineteenth century, when only the upper and middle classes traveled
outside the country and disseminated this image of "national character," obviously lost
relevance at a time when fans hooligans (so-called hooligans) disturb European cities, from
Barcelona to Istanbul. A few years ago, this supposedly phlegmatic character of the English
was denied on one memorable occasion: the funeral of Princess Diana. The flowers thrown
during the funeral procession, the lit candles, and the votive offerings left on the small altars
erected spontaneously by the country population, in short, all the open demonstrations of
feelings of love, loss and horror in the face of its tragic death were surely "Not English". The
circumspection and silence of the multitude that accompanied the funeral may have been the
only unsurprising aspect of the occasion and revealing the "Englishness" of the spectators.

IDENTITY AND IMAGINATION

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In short, this book may best be described as an essay on the identity of the English people,
rather than on their character. In other words, this book attempts to describe and interpret
English culture; culture in the sense of a way of life and values, norms and expectations
expressed in it. It is true that sometimes many individuals defy these norms a few times, and a
few others almost always challenge them, but the standards still provide an approximate guide
to everyday behavior. Anyway, in what follows, it will be impossible not to say that "English"
or "Englishmen" do or like to do certain things; what we mean by this is that the culture in
which they were born or where they migrated encourages them to enjoy these things or to do
them.

The famous London bus is an icon of the city, next to the mailboxes with royal coat of arms
and the red telephone booths. This latest version, with modern lines, still maintains two
traditional features: the red color and the two floors.

Many English and foreigners have a vivid idea of "Englishness," that is, of certain symbols
that define English culture and which have sometimes been (and still are) exploited for
economic and political reasons. In 1951, for example, the year of the Festival of Britain, the
government sent a fleet of red double-decker buses, such a characteristic London feature, on a
tour of the continent in order to attract more buyers for domestic products.

LISTS OF "ENGLISHNESS"

Four famous descriptions of English culture from within were in part sparked by World War
II and the need to make explicit what the nation was struggling for. They are generally good-
humored, revealing a skill of the English people often pointed out and praised by their
admirers: more than any other, according to them, this is a people who knows how to laugh at
themselves.

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A typical country pub with a fairly common name since the 17th century, "The Green Man",
located in the plains of East Anglia. According to some scholars, the name is associated with
the figure of the human head ornamented with leaves, which symbolizes the interdependence
between man and nature.

The writer George Orwell, better known for his pessimistic novels about the future, described
what he called "English civilization" in terms of " solid breakfasts and gloomy Sundays,
smoky towns and winding roads, green fields and red pillar-boxes" not forgetting" a delicious
cup of tea "and the pub, which he described as" one of the basic institutions of English life. "
As for the English, Orwell imagined that a foreign visitor would quickly notice his "artistic
insensitivity, gentleness, respect for legality, suspicion of foreigners, sentimentality about
animals, hypocrisy, exaggerated class distinctions, and obsession with sport."

The poet and critic T. S. Eliot, an American who became a British citizen (and some would
say, more English than the English themselves), described English culture througha number
of miscellaneous items: Derby Day (a horse race), Regatta Henley (traditional rowing
competition between Cambridge and Oxford), Cowes (a yacht race), a Football Championship
final, Wensleysdale cheese, vinegar beets, 19th century Gothic churches and music by Elgar
(composer of a famous unofficial national anthem).
Another English poet and critic, John Betjeman, included in his list - made during World War
II - institutions and experiences that he typically considered English, such as the Anglican
Church, the Women's Institutes (non-partisan women's clubs devoted to voluntary and
teaching activities) the village bed & breakfasts1, the rural train stations and "the sound of the
lawnmower on Saturday afternoons".
A little later, in 1956, German art historian Nikolaus Pevsner, who made England his adoptive
country (and will reappear many times in this book), described "Englishness" in terms of
"understatement, aversion to fussiness, distrust of rhetoric [...], personal independence,
freedom of speech, wise reconciliations, [...] an eminently civilized faith in honesty and fair
play, ability to stand in a line with the greatest patience, and open and convinced
conservatism, visible in the use of wigs in courts and gowns in schools and universities "(in
the 1950s, secondary school teachers still wore gowns in class).

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Understatement, this peculiar English way of speaking in a moderate way, characterized by

attenuation and the absence of emotion or excitement, is one of the features often listed as
typical of "Englishness". Significant examples are the so-called "not bad" and "not bad at all"
phrases - which, unlike what they say literally, generally mean "great" and "magnificent" in
the English language. The "wise conciliation" pointed out by Pevsner is a characteristic
praised also by other foreign observers, who are seduced by a country that, averse to extremes
and inclined to balancing antagonisms of all kinds, would have invented the "tradition of
conciliation" and the "white revolutions," without blood.

The annual competition between the universities of Cambridge and Oxford still attracts
audiences, although it is overshadowed by many other sporting events. Enthusiasm for them
in the nineteenth century, as the picture shows, was much greater.

As an architectural historian, Pevsner also drew attention to "windows that will never close
and heating that will never heat" (fortunately, these are no longer hallmarks of "Englishness").
About Pevsner's "aversion to fuss", as the distinctive feature of the British character, the very
title of Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing already provides a revealing example at the
end of the sixteenth century. Ado was the word used to designate what is now called, by the
English, fuss. A more recent history is even more illustrative of this. In 1982, when biologist
Aaron Klug received a call from the Department of Molecular Biology at the University of
Cambridge informing him that he had won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, exclaimed: "Now I
can buy a new bicycle!" No fuss, either from the government or the media, resulted from this
news. In France, on the contrary, the statement that three Frenchmen had received the Nobel
Prize was received with a fuss or, in English's words, with much fuss; the French government
even decreed a holiday in commemoration of the great feat. The fact that Britain is second
only to the Nobel Prize winners, only being overtaken by the United States, and that only
Cambridge University has won 90 of the prizes, may in part explain the reaction of the British
.

UPDATING “ENGLISHNESS”
Two years after Pevsner made his characterization of English culture, Raymond Williams, a
Welshman of humble origin who became eminent professor of English Literature at the

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University of Cambridge and who can be described as a British Antonio Candido for his
combination of left-wing politics with literary criticism and sociology, considered the list
made by TS Eliot very narrow because it was limited to "sports, food and little art". He then
suggested that other traits be added for British boasting: "steel production, car travel as
leisure, mixed farms (raising livestock and producing wheat), Stock Exchange, coal mining,
and London transport." While it is true that 50 years after Williams made such additions, the
Underground (which celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2013) and London buses can still be
regarded as a source of pride for the British, the steel industry and the mining industry almost
disappeared.
Four decades later, in 1998, the English popular newspaper The Sun - which competes with
the Daily Mail for the largest daily circulation in the UK - published a list of what it called
"100 reasons why it's great to be English." The list included the Beatles, actor Michael Caine,
red phone booths, the daily morning show Today (from Radio 4, the BBC), bingo,
Wimbledon, fish and chips, traditionally served wrapped in newspaper), Lancashire hotpot
(lamb casserole with vegetables), not forgetting also the "comforting and delicious cup of
English tea".
Most recently, in 2006, the government launched a survey on what it called "icons of
England". Among the most popular items chosen by the public, in addition to Big Ben,
cricket, Sherlock Holmes, a top hat and, of course, a "good cup of tea," were two significant
innovations: Empire Windrush, the ship bringing the first Jamaican immigrants to Britain in
1948, and the Notting Hill Carnival, a tradition these immigrants took from the Caribbean to
London. These are small signs that the Caribbeans and their descendants are now considered
English, at least by part of the population.
In order to update this list, what should be added today as "English icons"? William and Kate,
the charming young couple of royalty? Colin Firth, the actor who played King George VI in
the acclaimed film The King's Speech? As far as typical food is concerned, fish and chips
would have to be at least substituted or complemented with curry, one of the most popular
dishes in the country. When Ronald Biggs, the famous pay-train robber who made Brazil his
second homeland and died in London in 2013, decided to surrender to British police in 2001
and left his house in sunny Rio de Janeiro for a prison in gloomy London, he would have said
that during the three decades he lived in Brazil, he had missed three things: ale, marmite and
curry (see chapter "Way of life and values").

THE CITIZENSHIP TEST: SOLUTION OR FIASCO?

The problem of what counts as English, of what is authentically English (or British) - indeed,
of what is purely and simply authentic - has in recent years been the subject of newspaper
headlines and even a certain ridicule of the question itself. In 2005, the government instituted
the so-called British citizenship test for immigrants who want to naturalize or stay indefinitely
in the country, with the justification that these aspirants should share values common to other
citizens.
Since then, a succession of official attempts have been made to define Britishness, assuming
in all of them to have the key to knowing its key ingredients. The latest of these attempts, put
into effect in March 2013, focuses more on knowledge of British institutions and culture than
earlier ones, criticized for being too trivial and simplistic.
But the problem that remains crucial is that of who would have the unquestionable authority
to determine what Britishness, the civic identity which should unite us all? Who declares what
is relevant and what is not relevant in British history and culture? After studying the book Life
in the United Kingdom: A Journey to Citizenship, the candidate, whether he is a highly trained
surgeon from India or Australia, or a Bangladesh, is tested by a questionnaire - for which it

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pays 50 pounds. If you answer correctly 18 of the 24 questions, you will have scored the 75%
necessary to pass.
The achievements of British engineering, the inventors of hovercraft and ATMs, the poetry of
Robert Burns, Churchill's speeches, the identity of Scotland's patron saint, the music of
Benjamin Britten and the Beatles are part of what the Immigration Minister described as
"values and principles that make the essence of being British" and therefore central to the
immigrant's "participation in British life." Criticized for presuming that there is an agreement
of the British on what makes them what they are, this test has also been pointed out as totally
inappropriate to achieve its intended goal of improving cohesion and the integration of
communities. If this is really the intention, say the critics, the natives should also be tested
alongside the immigrants - and what we conclude, from the tests done by a sample of 12,000
British people, is that most would fail. In the case of the two authors of this book, surely one
of us would lose the British nationality acquired years ago if the consequences of failure on
the test were retroactive. The other, born British, would have the slightest chance of passing if
test questions focused on sports, popular music, or technology.

BRITISH VALUES
The question of the "British values" that characterize "Englishness" once again provoked
heated discussions in mid-2014 when Prime Minister David Cameron vehemently stated the
need to put aside scruples and shyness, so British, to speak about "our achievements and our
Britishness." In that country, he said, we have passed on the troubling message that "if you
don’t want to believe in democracy, that's fine; if equality is not your bag, do not worry; if
you are totally intolerant of others, we will still tolerate it.
"It is high time, he said, to openly promote and defend the central "British values" that form
the "basis of Britishness": "belief in freedom, tolerance for others, acceptance of personal and
social responsibility , respect for and maintenance of the rule of law ". These values, said
Cameron, who are as British as "the flag, football and fish and chips," should be promoted "in
every school and for every child in this country.”

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This edition of the popular newspaper The Sun was intended to be England's "unrepentant
celebration" of the 2014 World Cup when typical English modesty should be temporarily
suspended to give way to the necessary crowd.

The reason for this intervention was the revelation that several schools in Birmingham,
dominated by a "culture of fear and intimidation", were being led by Muslim extremists. This
call from the Prime Minister has sparked discussions about fundamental questions such as
values and the means of conveying them: can they be taught in the classroom or can it only be
conveyed by example in real life?
In a very different tone, between light and playful, the newspaper The Sun dedicated a number
again aimed at stimulating national pride, in a manner similar to that published in 1998, as we
have seen, but abolishing the traditional page 3, with topless models. The 24-page edition of
June 12, 2014, the opening date of the World Cup in São Paulo, was intended to stimulate
public pride in "Englishness" and English football. Distributed free of charge in 22 million
British homes, this "unrepentant celebration of England", as the editors themselves
acknowledged, went against the modest and discreet manner of being English, always tending
to minimize the deeds and virtues of the nation and its people - way of being that, at least in
the Cup period, as they said, needed to be suspended. The cover was an assembly with 118
photos of personalities who "capture the very essence of England today."
"What are the characteristics that best reflect 'Englishness'?" the reseach commissioned for
this edition came to the following result (in descending order): "respect for fair play, talking
about the weather, being tolerant towards others, queuing up, keeping a stiff upper lip,
sarcasm, difficulty complaining in public, etc.
It is known that many of those who appeared on this edition of The Sun did not accept the
commemorative edition, which caused controversy in certain circles, to the point that Ed

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Miliban, the leader of the Labor Party until May 2015, apologized for appearing in the media
with this issue of The Sun in the hands.

HIGH DEFINITION PROBLEMS

The thorny problem of defining a civic identity was the subject of the brilliant satire of
novelist Julian Barnes in England, England (1998). The author envisions a future
businessman, Sir Jack, transforming the Isle of Wight in southwestern England into a themed
amusement park that plays miniature versions of Big Ben and Buckingham Palace (including
the King himself to attract more tourists). Sir Jack's assistants create a catalog of the "50
quintessences of Englishness," which includes pubs, cricket, Robin Hood and so on, while the
"gastronomic subcommittee" lists the typical English dishes that tourists should relish. We
can not resist the temptation to imagine what a Brazilian equivalent of the theme park
designed by Barnes: the island of Itaparica populated with miniatures from the National
Congress, Cristo Redentor and Avenida Paulista, as well as a complete "casa grande e
senzala" with a church in Ouro Preto and a school of samba. A Carnival parade would take
place every day, while a supposedly typical restaurant would serve a mixture of feijoada,
pizza and acarajé.
Traditionally, national identity was something that was assumed to be so obvious that there
was no need to speak or even think about it. George Bernard Shaw, an Irish writer who lived
in England, characterized a sound nation as one who would be unaware of his nationality.
Undoubtedly, it is easier to maintain this attitude when living on an island, even though since
1994 the UK has been linked to the mainland by the Eurotunnel. One sign of this self-
confidence - currently weakened, but not yet destroyed - is that the British take much longer
than the Brazilians to ask foreign visitors what they think of their country; and this when they
ask, which may well not happen.

BOASTFUL NATIONALISM

When he was Prime Minister, Tony Blair once stated: "The British are special. The world
knows that. In our innermost thoughts, we know it. This is the greatest nation on earth! "Do
his countrymen share this view? The famous playwright Tom Stoppard, who was born in
Czechoslovakia, came to England as a war refugee and settled there in 1946 as a child,
remembers his English stepfather telling him: "Don’t you realise that I made you British? "As
Stoppard puts it, he had a deep belief that" being born English was to have drawn first prize in
the lottery of life. "
We suspect that many still think so, even if they feel ashamed to admit it, and that only a
minority consider the words of Blair and Stoppard's stepfather exceptionally exaggerated.
After all, as Bernard Shaw said with his usual sarcasm, "The ordinary Britisher imagines that
God is an Englishman."
In any case, Blair's attitude is part of a long tradition, which goes back to a time before the
British Empire, whose power could be deceptively seen as the cause of this boastfulness. In
1500, a Venetian ambassador in England wrote to his family that the English were "great
lovers of themselves and of everything belonging to them." The openness with which England
has received political and religious refugees throughout history has been pointed out as a
measure of the security and stability felt by the country, security and stability regarded as
practically unshaken by external factors. For some, British insularity, alongside the powerful
Royal Navy ships - traditionally known as the "wooden walls of England" - would be one of
the sources of this security, self-confidence, and pride. As Norman Tebbit, a Margaret
Thatcher government minister in the 1980s, once said: "The blessing of insularity has long

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protected us against rabid dogs and dictators alike." It is this sentiment that perhaps explains
the lack of enthusiasm that many Britons have towards the European Union and the promise
made by Prime Minister David Cameron to make a referendum on the relationship of the
United Kingdom with the European Union if he were re-elected in May 2015 - and that now,
having been reelected, will be effectively realized. Opinion polls in 2014 suggested that the
majority of the British population would vote to leave the Union.

WHO'S THE OTHER ONE"?

Just like so many other nations, the English define their identity - when they care to define it -
against the "Other." Traditionally, the "Other" has been France, the main enemy since the
Hundred Years' War (1337-1453) until the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815).

The Scots, for their part, have long regarded the French as their allies against the English.
Despite the two World Wars, Germany does not play the same role as "Other", perhaps
because it is more distant from England than France.
Even alliances with France in the First and Second World War were not enough to eliminate
the traditional suspicion of the rival nation on the other side of the English Channel, a rivalry
that was particularly obvious when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister (1979-1990).
Thatcher's project for the new British Library was an attempt to surpass the Mitterrand project
for the new Bibliothèque Nationale of France. Similarly, when invited to celebrate the
bicentenary of the French Revolution organized by Mitterrand in 1989, she did not miss the
opportunity to comment publicly that the British had established human rights one hundred
years before the French, and without violence. Long before, in 1859, Charles Dickens
contrasted the French Revolution with the Glorious Revolution of 1688, one of England's
greatest pride, in one of his many bestsellers, Tale of Two Cities.
In the first decades of the XXI century, breaking the tradition, debates about identity are
becoming more intense, and some commentators talk about the identity crisis they reveal.
Manifestations of nationalism are made more openly than before with the use, for example, of
the white, red and blue national flag known as the Union Jack, because it combines the
traditional flags of England, Scotland, and Ireland. One can see it fluttering in front of houses
and apartments, reproduced in everyday objects, from umbrellas to blouses, boots and
sunglasses, wrapping spectators at football games (or even painted on their faces) and so on.
And it is not so unusual to hear people muttering things like "speak English in England" or
even "England to the English."

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The new and monumental British Library in St. Pancras, London, was the largest public
building built in the country in the twentieth century. Planned when Thatcher was Prime
Minister, it illustrates the traditional rivalry between England and France, since its
construction was a response to the new Bibliothèque Nationale de France, planned by
President Mitterrand.

ENGLISH OR BRITISH?
The big question to be discussed further in the next chapter is this: "English or British?". For
the English, who take their supremacy as a given, the two terms are almost synonymous. To
the fury of the Scots and the Welsh, the English often say, in defiance of defying of the
geographical data, that "England is an island," as if the whole island were occupied only by
England and were not shared by three countries.
"What is Britishness?", asked Gwynfor Evans, the former president of Plaid Cymru (the
Welsh National Party). His bitter reply was this: "If one asks what the difference is between
English and British culture, one realizes that there is no difference. They are the same. The
British language is the English language. British education is English education. British

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television is English television. The British press is the English press. The British Crown is
the English Crown and the Queen of Britain is the Queen of England. "
The official title of the state, "United Kingdom" - whose full name is United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Northern Ireland - was never accepted outside official circles. In everyday
language, the identity that extends to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland is that of
"British"; identity that, in the case of Northern Ireland, is only accepted by the Protestant Irish
(the Catholics reject it). Recent immigrants from the Caribbean or Pakistan, for example, tend
to say that they are "Black British" or "British Asian," rather than using the term "English."
On the other hand, the long-established Britons tend to call themselves "English", "Welsh" or
"Scots", depending on the case. The wars with France may have encouraged a consciousness
of a Protestant British identity in the eighteenth century, but in the long run and for most
people, the idea of "Britain" turned out to be much less attractive than the idea of England.

FEAR AND NOSTALGIA

Nowadays there is often a claim that Britain is becoming less British, or England less English,
. Those who complain are, in general, conservatives who resent cultural change in the name of
a "timeless England" usually located in childhood. They have lost George Orwell’s faith that
no matter what happens, "England will still be England, an everlasting animal stretching into
the future and the past and, like all living things, having the power to change out of all
recognition and yet remain the same. "

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Although they entered the European community in the 1970s and accepted the replacement of
the blue passport with the red, the British refused to renounce the traditional symbol of their
monarchy, which illustrates the cover of the document: a lion and a unicorn holding the royal
coat of arms.

Some people blame the Americanization of culture for this loss of "Englishness," which has
happened since the Yankees were stioned in Britain during World War II. Others, especially
members of ultra-right parties - the small UKIP (United Kingdom Independent Party) and the
smaller National Front - blame the European Union, immigration or multiculturalism. The
replacement of the traditional blue British passport with the red passport of the European
Community in 1988 was lamented by many, including John Major, who promised that if he
was prime minister, he would never allow "our distinctive British identity to get lost in federal
Europe."
Indeed, the attempt by the European Union to abolish the golden royal coat of arms on the
British passport, as well as the traditional first-page text, caused an uproar among the people.
After all, both are very dear to the British in general, who enjoy tradition and want to be
clearly associated with their nation, whether or not they are admirers of the monarch. For
more than 300 years, the passport text has contained words that still impress: "Her Britannic
Majesty's Secretary of State requests and requires in the Name of Her Majesty's all those
whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance, and to afford
the bearer all necessary assistance and protection." It was in 1641 that passports - which were
not required for travel - were no longer signed directly by the king (in this case, Charles I) and
were signed in the name of the king, asking or even demanding, according to the centennial
text, that his subjects were protected and helped when abroad.
The development of nationalist movements in Scotland and Wales, which led to the
establishment in 1999 of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, as well as debates

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on Scottish independence (on which there was a referendum in September 2014), gave rise to
a kind of English nationalist reaction. A sign of it, more or less visible since 1990, is the
celebration of St. George's Day, the patron of England, on April 23 - celebration virtually
nonexistent before that time. Another sign is the increased use of the English flag, that is, the
flag of St. George with the red cross on a white background, which has been taking the place
of the Union Jack. The cross of St. George now appears more and more on the banners
displayed on the windows of private homes and painted on the faces of football fans when
"England" plays in another country. A significant turnaround appears to have taken place in
the 1996 Eurocup football championship, held in England, perhaps in response to the
then current debate about a devolved Scottish Parliament.

FOREIGN AND ALMOST FOREIGN OBSERVERS

This book is the latest in a long series of studies on the English made by both foreigners and
natives. Foreigners include Voltaire, who lived in London before writing his Lettres sur les
Anglais (Philosophical Letters, 1734) and led a whole wave of Anglophile writings and
demonstrations in the eighteenth century; Hippolyte Taine, intellectual positivist and author of
Notes sur l'Angleterre (Notes on England, 1872); the German diplomat-architect Hermann
Muthesius, an enthusiast of English domestic architecture; the Czech writer Karel Capek,
author of English Letters (1924); the writer and member of the Académie Française André
Maurois, author of several works on the English; the Dutch historian Gustaf Renier, whose
book, published in 1931, had the witty title of The English: Are They Human?; the Hungarian
journalist George Mikes, who became a British citizen and published in 1946 the bestseller
How to be an Alien; the German art historian Nikolaus Pevsner, who broadcast on a radio
station and then published a series of lectures on The Englishness of English Art, 1970; and a
number of American writers, from the novelist Henry James, who became a British citizen, to
Sarah Lyall, a contemporary journalist who married an Englishman.

Many foreigners wrote about the English and about England. The German art historian
Nikolaus Pevsner described the cathedral and Durham's episcopal palace, a UNESCO World
Heritage Site, as "one of Europe's greatest visual experiences."

Located somewhere between the foreigner and the native is George Orwell, whose real name
was Eric Blair. Orwell, who was born in India and was the son of a colonial administrator,
went on to work for the Imperial Indian Police before settling in England and becoming one

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of the most important and lucid writers and chroniclers of twentieth-century English culture.
A member of the English upper class, educated at Eton (the most prestigious British public
school, which publicly has only the name, as we shall see later), it can be said that Orwell
discovered England, especially the English working class, as an anthropologist would do,
having lived in the East End, the poorest region of London, and in Lancashire, in order to
observe the destitute population.
In a sense, Nicolaus Pevsner can be equated with Orwell in his role of "almost foreign"
observer. Having lived in England for half a century, he was described as an observer of
English art with the "dual vision of a thoroughly inside outsider." His familiarity with the
architecture of the continent allowed him to say the following about Durham, a beautiful city
north of England: "the group of Cathedral, Castle and Monastery on the rock can only be
compared to Avignon and Prague".

NATIVE OBSERVERS
As for the natives who wrote about England, they include the brilliant journalist Walter
Bagehot, whose study of the British Constitution (published in 1867) became a classic and
whose own surname serves as a title for a weekly political column of the prestigious British
magazine The Economist; Geoffrey Gorer, a social anthropologist who investigated in 1950
what he called "English character" through a questionnaire; Anthony Sampson, the Bagehot
of the 1960s, whose Anatomy of Britain made him famous; the journalists Jeremy Paxman
and Andrew Marr, important figures of the contemporary media; a historian-turned journalist,
Peter Hennessy; the also social anthropologist, Kate Fox; and a statistical geographer, Danny
Dorling. The rapid increase in English books written by Englishmen - and apparently for
English consumption - since the 1990s suggests that there is growing uncertainty about
national identity.
Some of the studies on the English are outdated in many respects, while, of course, all authors
have their own particular perspectives and, in some cases, their own agendas. Some natives,
such as the conservative philosopher Roger Scruton and Peter Hitchens, a journalist who
supports the death penalty, for example, have lamented over a Britain they believe is in the
process of disappearing. They want, as Scruton says, to contribute to preserving things rather
than destroying them.

ANGLOFILIA

Many foreigners adopt English culture, including great writers such as the Americans Henry
James and T. S. Eliot and the Polish Joseph Conrad, all literally fascinated by the
"Englishness" of their country of adoption. Gilberto Freyre was another confessed and
convinced Anglophile that, despite reservations about the "excesses of reticence characteristic
of the Anglo-Saxons", was totally seduced by a country where, as he said, "there is never an
excess for either the left or the right." When he was young and frustrated with his Brazilian
status, he even lamented, "Why was not I born English ...?" The historian Geoffrey Elton
(born in Germany and originally known as Gerhard Ehrenberg) began his story of The
English, 1992) with the confession that, upon arriving in England in 1939, at the age of 17,
"within a few months it dawned upon me that I had arrived in the country in which I ought to
have been born."
If we are to believe what many Anglophiles say, behind this anglophilia is the admiration for
the history, institutions and freedom of the English.
Voltaire, in the eighteenth century, proposed that France and the world should emulate what
English institutions and values. "Why can’t the world be more like England?", he asked.
Another Frenchman in the twentieth century, André Maurois, praised the trajectory of a

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people who would have had a fate as impressive as that of the ancient Romans, and who had
created an empire larger than the Roman Empire. “It is the history of how certain Saxon and
Danish tribes, isolated on an island on the outer rim of Europe, merging with the Celtic and
Roman survivors, became with the passing centuries the masters of one third of the planet.”
The strength of the British legacy - visible beyond the old boundaries of the British Empire,
and decades after it ceased to exist - still feeds a certain Anglophilia. As historian Felipe
Fernández-Armesto recalled, when today we see cricket games in Singapore next to an
Anglican cathedral, Eskimos speaking English and playing football, lawyers wearing wigs
like the English in the courts of Melbourne, congregations in Patagonia singing hymns in the
Welsh language, Shakespeare’s plays being performed in Germany more than those of any
German playwright, there is no way of not recognizing that "the people who exerted the
greatest impact on the rest of the world were the British."
It may be said that some foreigners have become more English than the English themselves,
so much so that their testimonies are suspecious because, as the philosopher Isaiah Berlin
(who arrived in England from Russia in 1921, aged 11) pointed out, they offered back to
England "its most self-congratulatory myths." On the other hand, other immigrants like
Renier and Mikes - the authors of The English: Are They Human? and How to be an Alien -
speak of England with a mixture of delight and irritation. Karl Marx, who is buried in the
picturesque Highgate Cemetery in London, having spent most of his life there, writing much
of his work in the library of the British Museum, is another good example of an immigrant
who felt a certain exasperation at the way of being of the Englishman and at the fact that, in
that country, even the worker would be bourgeois.

A PERSONAL VISION
As authors of this book, we can not obviously put ourselves as exceptions and recognize that
here we express our personal visions. That is, as residents of Britain, speaking of the
"English", we are, in a way, speaking on behalf of more than 60 million other residents.
What is more unusual, however, is that our work developed out of a dialogue between a
native (who sometimes lived abroad and is the grandson of four immigrants who arrived in
England more than a century ago) and a foreigner (a Brazilian who has lived in England for
more than 25 years). We write this book especially for the Brazilians, whether they are
visiting Britain, whether they have visited it, want to visit it or simply want to know more
about the country.

In the following chapter, we sought to distinguish England from the rest of Britain and also to
point out some of the main variations of "Englishness." The third chapter focuses on British
institutions, and the fourth discusses the English way of life and the values it expresses. The
fifth chapter deals with the arts and chapter six, with English history, followed by a brief
conclusion which offers some comparisons and contrasts between England and Brazil.

NOTE

1 Bed and breakfasts have a warm and friendly atmosphere. They are, in general, small
lodging establishments and are often part of a private residence.

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