A Long Silence
David A. Bell: ‘Englishness’, 14 December 2000
Englishness Identified: Manners and Character, 1650-1850
by Paul Langford.
Oxford, 389 pp., £25, April 2000,9780198206811 Show More
by Paul Langford.
Oxford, 389 pp., £25, April 2000,
“... The Americans have ‘American exceptionalism’. The French have ‘l’exception française’. The Germans have ‘der deutsche Sonderweg’. The English, on the other hand, have no equivalent catchphrase: it seems they take their exceptionality so much for granted that they don’t even bother putting a name to it ... ”