Robert Colls
Happy Hunting
The Last Wolf: The Hidden Springs of Englishness
By Robert Winder
Little, Brown 470pp £20
Our search for the hidden springs of Englishness begins in 1290 with the slaying of the last wolf in England by Sir Peter Corbet. As the story goes, this made the country safe enough to become a vast sheep farm and that, in turn, produced the wool that produced the wealth that produced the revenues that, along with much else, produced the lords and ladies and caramel-coloured churches that all the world knows as English. After the wool came the wheat, and after the wheat came the coal, which plunged the country into a future of steel rails and smoking cities. After coal and empire (I’m hurrying on here) came our current dilemmas and Brexit, the real beginning and end of Robert Winder’s 800-year journey into national consciousness.
In 2004, he wrote a book about English attitudes to immigration called Bloody Foreigners, which cast us, more or less, as a sort of Millwall-in-the-Sea. Bigotry was our game and we didn’t care who knew it. In those days, Winder seemed to think he had no national identity
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk