I wanted to flag up this week’s Spectator magazine which has a St George’s Day special issue titled ‘England Rides Again’. In contrast to their cover story from 19th February 2005 where the magazine announced the death of Englishness under the headline ‘Goodbye England’. In this week’s issue, they announce: ‘England Rides Again’ ‘Welcome back England’. ‘Assaults on England’s country sports, customs and history and the growing injustices of devolution have only strengthened its sense of itself and its confidence in its future. Welcome Back England -and happy St George’s Day’. Check out their feature called ‘So What is England?’ where they have asked some leading public figures (David Hockney, Andrew Neil, Jack Straw and Mohamed Al Fayed!? among others) for their answers to this question.

Alongside the Spectator on the news stands this week is the New Statesman which features an article called  ‘So, is it all right to be an English nationalist?’ by Paul Kingsnorth (author of “Real England: the Battle Against the Bland” which has just been published by Portobello Books £14.99. See http://www.realengland.co.uk for more details).

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 2:10 pm and is filed under ENGLISHNESS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.