Country life
Nostalgia for £3.70
Leanda de Lisle
lost a credit card on my day trip to Lon- don, but gained a copy of 'Britain's loveli- est magazine'. Entitled This England, it described itself as a 'patriotic quarterly with over two million readers worldwide'. Impressive claims, but I was rather embar- rassed to pick it off the shelf and take it to the till. Would the lady at the W.H. Smith check-out assume I was a racist nut buying some 'white power' manifesto?
Eventually I made my £3.70 purchase, reasoning that a) W.H. Smith wouldn't sell a publication designed to foment racial hatred — unless they had unintentionally employed a racist buyer which would be quite a story; b) I had only recently written in the pages of this magazine that English patriotism is (or should be) a healthy thing, so I should put my money where my mouth was; and c) it would be quite interesting to see what was so lovely about this magazine that 2 million people chose to read it.
Having now read Britain's loveliest mag- azine I can tell you it contained nothing very ugly. They quoted the Pope describing patriotism as 'the correct and just love for one's identity as a member of a certain national community', highlighting his view that, 'while patriotism also shows esteem for others, nationalism despises all that is not its own' and is, therefore, the negation of patriotism. Hardly stuff to appeal to readers with shaved heads and tattoos of the Cross of St George. Its tone, in fact, seemed better designed to appeal to retired colonels and their wives.
This England is conservative and nostal- gic, if not particularly lovely. It is filled with pleasant but ordinary photographs of English villages, country churches and canal barges as well as articles about Win- ston Churchill and the threat of European federalism. I much enjoyed a piece written by the head gardener at a private house in the Midlands, complaining about how he is often taken away from his work to help in the house, hanging curtains and setting mouse-traps. It reminded me of our own gardener, currently painting an upstairs room. However, the magazine was ulti- mately rather depressing. Their England seemed to be going to the dogs.
In 'A personal commentary on the chang- ing times' we are told nothing but bad news. When I wrote about the importance of English patriotism last month, I said that our children needed to know their nation's history and that there is much to be proud of in it. I stand by that (of course). Howev- er, just as there are dangers to their esteem in presenting English history in the worst possible light, so there are dangers in seeing our past entirely through rose-tinted specta- cles. If old England was so much more glo- rious than ours, then today's generation must feel inadequate when they compare themselves to their ancestors.
But we are part of a historical continuum that has brought us increasing benefits. The average Englishman, not to mention Englishwoman, is better off now than they were a generation ago. If it is sad to see the countryside scarred with motorways (as This England complains), we should remember that they have enabled us to travel cheaply and easily. Perhaps in the future we will be able to enjoy the benefits to progress and keep the countryside beau- tiful. The younger generation is supposed to be the Green generation, after all.
There was one other thing about This England that struck me. The faces in it were all white. I don't want to get all PC, but our village has an Asian shop and the next-door one a Chinese restaurant. Both have added to the quality of our lives. A magazine that calls itself This England should celebrate the country we live in, rather than simply the one our grandparents were born in. England offers plenty of fresh material for Britain's loveliest magazine. It would be a pity if perhaps 2 million people were deter- mined to believe otherwise.
Jeremy Clarke's column returns in a fortnight. Petronella Wyatt is away.
'You'll have to speak up. There's someone reading a really ntstly newspaper.'
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