IN SEARCH OF THE ENGLISH

A Walking History

The English. A people divided, a nation in crisis over who they once were and who they are today.

How did it come to that? What did it ever mean, indeed, to be English?

In 2018, stranded in England and drifting in darkness through the white heat of Brexit, I ended up wandering along the Capital Ring trail around the outskirts of the English capital, London. This text is the result: a walking history of the English people.

From the cannons of Woolwich and bombers of Hendon to the dinosaurs and cast-plate glass of the Crystal Palace; from the tennis and blood sports of Wimbledon and Richmond to such dreams and nightmares as gave rise to the Harrow school-on-the-hill and the 2012 Olympics; from the killing of Charles I, to the killing of Stephen Lawrence; here are English modernity and England-before-England, English division, violence and bitter conflict, English industry and empire, English hearts, fears and dreams, and the troubling, troubled paradox of the English relationship with the outside world.

Come along for a grumpy stranger’s critical circumambulation of the heart of English power – a fifteen-stage exploration of the stories, problems, and deep historic and mythic waters from which this nation’s struggles rise.

For more like this, see also this critical walking history up the river Thames (2019-22) on my blog, ‘Superfluous Bear’.