Why do we still get misty-eyed about England's green and pleasant land? What explains our obsession with country houses - from the National Trust to Downton Abbey? Why do we still dream of a place in the country? In this delightul book Roy Strong explores the definition of Englishness. Celebrating our literature, music, art, gardening and drama, Strong identifies those icons and traditions that still speak to us - it is a vision of England that is inclusive and relevant for everybody living in the country today.

In examining how the laboring people of nineteenth-century England saw their social order, this text looks beyond class to reveal the significance of other sources of social identity and social imagery, including the notions of "the people" themselves.

Visions of England is a provocative and original exploration of Englishness, in particular English class, in contemporary cinema. Class has been a central part, whether consciously or not, of much of English social analysis and artistic production for over a century. But as a way of interpreting society, class has found itself sidelined in a postmodern world. Visions of England presents a detailed analysis of the changing landscape of English class and culture. Visions of England explores a wide range of film production - from gangster thrillers like Lock, Stock Two Smoking Barrels to the period cinema of Elizabeth, from cult classics like Performance and Trainspotting to the mainstream romantic comedy of Notting Hill and Bridget Jones, from the social realist drama of Billy Elliot and The Full Monty to the multicultural comedy of Bend it like Beckham, and the experimentalism of films such as London Orbital and Robinson in Space. An extraordinarily wide-ranging and incisive study, Visions of England rewrites the relationship of film and Englishness.

In 1999, while working as his Literary Secretary, the Earl of Burford, a descendant of the 3rd Earl of Southampton (Shakespeare’s patron) and of the 17th Earl of Oxford and heir to the Dukedom of St Albans, made a selection of Nicholas Hagger’s poems that celebrates places in England, conveys his mystical awareness of the unity of the universe and places him in the visionary tradition of William Blake, the poet of ‘Jerusalem’ and “England’s green and pleasant land”. Soon after Visions of England was completed the Earl of Burford came to international attention when he leapt onto the Woolsack of the House of Lords in a principled protest against the Blair Government’s plan to abolish hereditary peers’ voting rights, which led to 92 remaining in the Lords. A few months later he left Nicholas Hagger’s employ and the selection was buried under papers for nearly 20 years. In 2018 Nicholas Hagger came across Visions of England while preparing papers to send to his archive. It now seemed as if the selection had been made with Brexit in mind. The places are full of English history and culture, and the poems are prophetic in their anticipation of England’s new spirit of independence. These poems convey Englishness with a freshness and vividness that startle. The Earl of Burford is a prominent lecturer and biographer, and his selection is noteworthy for the metaphysical perspective he brings out in Nicholas Hagger’s profound poems whose traditional qualities constantly surprise and delight.

Publisher description

This volume is the first to explore the breadth of vision types in late medieval English lay spirituality. Analyzing 1000+ accounts, it proposes that visions buttressed five core dynamics (relating to purgatory, saints, demons, sacramental faith, and the Church's authority).

An exploration of one of England’s great ancient monuments: the 360-foot-long chalk White Horse at Uffington. The White Horse at Uffington is an icon of the English landscape—a prehistoric, nearly abstract figure 360 feet long, carved into the green turf of a chalk hill. Along with Stonehenge, the Horse is widely regarded as one of the Wonders of Britain. For centuries antiquarians, travelers, and local people have speculated about the age of the Horse, who created it, and why. Was it a memorial to King Alfred the Great’s victory over the Danes, an emblem of the first Anglo-Saxon settlers, was the Horse an actor in an elaborate prehistoric ritual, drawing the sun across the sky? Archaeologist David Miles explores the rich history of the ancient white horse, as well as the surrounding landscape, in order to understand the people who have lived there since the end of the Ice Age. As Miles tracks the possible origin of this English landmark, he also illuminates how the White Horse has influenced countless artists, poets, and writers, including Eric Ravilious, John Betjeman, and J. R. R. Tolkien. The White Horse is one of most remarkable monuments of England, not least because it is still intact. People have cared for it and curated it for centuries, even millennia. Ultimately, Miles, using an archaeological framework, roots a myth for modern times in scientific findings.

Historians recognize the cultural centrality of the newspaper press in Britain, yet very little has been published regarding competing conceptions of the press and its proper role in British society. In Visions of the Press in Britain, 1850-1950, Mark Hampton surveys a diversity of sources--Parliamentary speeches and commissions, books, pamphlets, periodicals and select private correspondence--in order to identify how governmental elites, the educated public, professional journalists, and industry moguls characterized the political and cultural function of the press. Hampton demonstrates that British theories of the press were intimately tied to definitions of the public and the emergence of mass democracy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

A study of the production, circulation and consumption of English ghost stories during the Age of Reason. This work examines a variety of mediums: ballads and chapbooks, newspapers, sermons, medical treatises and scientific journals, novels and plays. It relates the telling of ghost stories to changes associated with the Enlightenment.

The Roman Sodom -- City of destruction -- The end of the world -- Laws -- Histories -- Lust and morality in the (long) eighteenth century -- The discovery of Sodom, 1851