politalX Politics Store - England: An Elegy
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List Price: £9.99
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Manufacturer: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 942
EAN: 9780826480750
ISBN: 0826480756
Label: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.
Manufacturer: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 270
Publication Date: 2006-04-13
Publisher: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.
Studio: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Following in the footsteps of distinguished books such as Peter Laslett's The World We Have Lost and Julian Barnes' England, England, Roger Scruton's England: An Elegy is a deeply personal lament for the disappearance of the England of his childhood. "Having been famous for their stoicism, their decorum, their honesty, their gentleness and their sexual puritanism, the English now subsist in a society in which those qualities are no longer honoured, a society of people who regard long-term loyalties with cynicism, and whose response to misfortune is to look around for someone to sue". The result is a deeply personal account of Scruton's own life, his complex relationship with his disillusioned socialist father, who "loved what was local, collegial and attached to the land", and a wide-ranging historical and philosophical meditation on English character, community, religion, law, society, government, culture and the countryside. England: An Elegy is an impassioned defence of monarchy, religion and home, against the ^"anti-English hullabaloo" that Scruton detects in a climate of devolution and European federalism. He writes with his typically intelligent and sceptical conservatism, but this is a deeply pessimistic and elitist book, that will only delight right-wing Eurosceptics. The book has a tendency to demolish Marxist views on nationhood through rhetoric rather than evidence, and its historical scope is simply too large and vague to offer a serious account of Englishness as a social and political phenomenon. Scruton offers no answers to England's dilemmas, arguing simply to be allowed to mourn the death of England, and that "to describe something as dead is not to call for its resurrection". Many readers might find that England: An Elegy is a fitting epitaph to a world that we are glad to have lost, if it ever really existed. --Jerry Brotton
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A mournful look at the erosion and 'forgetting' of England.
Comment: Scruton is not a reactionary; do not be put off by his columms which often suggest outraged sentimentality: the worst kind. The IRA thrive on that diet.
The book is well researched; the prose is never stodgy; the arguments and summaries never make you feel uncomfortable; and the impulses behind the writing of 'England' are never mean spirited.
Scruton deplores jingoism. He derides the same type of verse and prose which Wilfred Owen vilified in 'Dulce et decorum est'. Henry Newbolt for example comes in for some incendiary commentary.
Scruton celebrates the inventiveness; the quirkiness; the randomness; the intellectual acuity; the bovine stubborness; the bravery; the foolishness of Englishness. The lament to institutions is particularly telling. The atrophy of aspects of nature as a result of insipid urban sprawl made me sigh. Societies which 'protect' birds, he notes, can only powerlessly report on their decline.
Scruton helpfully 'anatomises' the concept of Englishness which I, for one, didn't wholly understand.
Patriotism need not be the last resort of the scoundrel. I am not a scoundrel and, in spite of what you might think about Scruton's journalism, neither is he.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A brilliant account of the English identity - and its decay
Comment: Roger Scruton has penned an important - and possibly definitive - contribution vis-a-vis the developing debate on 'Englishness'. He examines the core areas of the English polity and national psyche in eleven chapters, and does so with refreshing intellectual rigour. Mr Scruton provides many fascinating insights, often illuminated by poignant personal recollections. Neither too dry and 'academic' nor too 'populist' and sentimental, this is an unusual, sad and illuminating 'elegy', but an elegy it certainly is. For anyone interested in England, the English, or the United Kingdom today, it provides invaluable reading. I highly reccommend it.
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