Idiosyncrasies of the English
Robert Winder examines the historical introspection on the idiosyncrasies of the English, and the often general assumption that the national identity must be a matter of values and ideas, as his new work examines the shooting of England’s last wolf by Shropshire knight Peter Corbet. However, one can never track down the moment a wild animal becomes extinct, as alleged sightings of the petrified wolf can linger for generations. In 1941, “ highly civilised human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me”, George Orwell composed The Lion and the Unicorn, a classic essay on “ the English genius”. He observed, that “ We call our islands by no less than six different names, England, Great Britain, the British Isles, the United Kingdom and in very exalted moments, Albion, and wondered how to make sense of this patchwork. Orwell, in his sentimental picture of a pre-war world: “old maids biking to Holy Communion through the mists of early morning”.
Early 1290, there was a report of wolves savaging royal deer. The Wolves absence from England is fundamental to the way the country developed.
English sheep created the nation’s first fortune, founded on wool and Winder’s argument is that it was geography which shaped the national character and destiny: wheat, coal, iron, the sheep, the sea, the weather until 2016 when 51.9 per cent of UK voters opted for Brexit, as UK retirees rushing to settle in Europe.
According to Winder, the 18thcentury philosopher Montesquleu, who discovered that hot weather produced hot-tempered people and that English aplomb came directly from its weather.
Robert Winder’s ground breaking book on immigration to Britain, Bloody Foreigners, has a centrepiece, Edward I’s expulsion of the Jews, which also included story how one of the boats carrying refugees struck a sandbank, whereupon the captain encouraged his passengers to get off and stretch their legs, and then sailed despondently away shouting that Moses would save them and abandoned them to drown.
The Norman invaders were migrants, but promptly became the embodiment of Englishness, as migration was followed quickly by integration.
In the old Lancashire cotton towns, the third and fourth generations of migrants recruited from Pakistan, in vain effort to save the industry., who still speak Punjabi at home, and some lead Mosque-centred lives with hardly any contact with the native population.
Winder travelled from Berwick-on-Tweed to the White Cliffs to discover that the massacre of the wolves was a political decision. He highlights Chaucer’s pilgrims would have passed more mills than churches. He said “ while it is hard to imagine what medieval English felt like, we can at least imagine what it sounded like – the creaking of a water mill was the background music in every valley, all day, every day as integral to the English scene as birdsong or the bleating of lambs.”
He compares Henry VIII’s break from Rome with Brexit and reveals the national obsession with relics “On an average Saturday, more people visit National Trust properties than attend football matches.”
The Last Wolf: The Hidden Springs of Englishness by Robert Winder, Little Brown £20, 480 pages.