English Culture: From the 18th Century to the Present Day

Culture. What is it? Paintings or television? The National Gallery or Harry Styles? There is of course no one answer, no agreement. But what is clear is that culture, however defined, plays a key role as a form and content of identity, while, in turn, it is affected by changes in the patterns and pressures of identification.In Emma, Jane Austen praised Shakespeare as a touchstone of Englishness and wrote: ‘It was a sweet view - sweet to the eye and the mind.English verdure, English culture, English comfort, seen under a sun bright, without being oppressive.’ Would anyone today write the same words without irony?Professor Black charts the changes in English culture over three centuries. Turnpikes, steam engines, canals, novels, landscape gardens, Adam Smith et al were scarcely indicators of an unchanging world; but Jeremy Black points out that the early period analysed was profoundly historic.The historical bent of the years from the Glorious Revolution to the Great Reform Act could be