For Caesar, Britain was a nation of small farmers, for Napoleon, one of shopkeepers. Now it is one of small investors, ruled by retail outlets. Perhaps. Always these descriptions leave out more than they include: the late Iron Age farmers would have had a modest allotment of slaves, grain and livestock, and the occasional pronouncements of druids, while the present day has invisible labour, Ikea, and Martin Amis. Or something like that. My point is that it's a cultural continuity so it's surprising that anyone's surprised by it. I notice that when a name like Tolkien is invoked it's forgotten that its popularity is international: bourgeois home comforts are not a uniquely British longing. while, too, you can find Tolkien invoked alongside Ezra Pound in white suprematist littérateurs internet cafes, how about that for a coming together? My advice would be not to lose sleep over Martin Amis, as I doubt if he cares about what 'we' think of him. I'd suggest that some things are better left in their sleeping villages: do people remember Orwell's remarks about what would happen when the Great British middle-class public starts calling itself 'socialist'? Or its poets become 'modernists'? Or its universities start teaching 'creative writing'? well maybe some of that has.
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David Joseph Bircumshaw
"The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."
- Calvin & Hobbes
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