Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the first edition
- Introduction to the new edition
- Part I The setting
- 1 The Janus face of modern English culture
- 2 Victorian society: accommodation and absorption
- Part II A world view
- Part III Toward behavior
- Part IV Industrialism and English values
- Appendix: British retardation – the limits of economic explanation
- Notes
- Index
1 - The Janus face of modern English culture
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the first edition
- Introduction to the new edition
- Part I The setting
- 1 The Janus face of modern English culture
- 2 Victorian society: accommodation and absorption
- Part II A world view
- Part III Toward behavior
- Part IV Industrialism and English values
- Appendix: British retardation – the limits of economic explanation
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Bladesover is, I am convinced, the clue to almost all that is distinctively British and perplexing to the foreign inquirer in England … Grasp firmly that England was all Bladesover two hundred years ago; that it has had Reform Acts indeed, and such-like changes of formula, but no essential revolution since then; that all that is modern and different has come in as a thing intruded or as a gloss upon this predominant formula, either impertinently or apologetically … Everybody who is not actually in the shadow of a Bladesover is as it were perpetually seeking after lost orientations. We have never broken with our tradition, never even symbolically hewed it to pieces, as the French did in quivering fact in the Terror. But all the organizing ideas have slackened, the old habitual bonds have relaxed or altogether come undone.
—H. G. Wells, Tono-Bungay (1908)Cultural values and economic lag
The leading problem of modern British history is the explanation of economic decline. It has not always been thus. Until the later nineteen-sixties the generally accepted frame for the history of Britain over the previous century was that of a series of success stories: the bloodless establishment of democracy, the evolution of the welfare state, triumph in two world wars, and the enlightened relinquishment of empire. Such a happy frame, however, became increasingly hard to maintain as, having steered clear of the rocks of political turmoil or military defeat, the British found themselves becalmed in an economic Sargasso sea.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004
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