England - Their England

England, Their England is A. G. MacDonell’s affectionate investigation into the English character, conducted on the sensible assumption that the English are far too close to the subject to be trusted with it themselves.

I have made repairs to the spine which should mean it will hold its own.

Donald Cameron is a young Scotsman who, having survived the First World War, is banished south by an inconvenient provision in his father’s will. In England he encounters a mysterious population devoted to newspapers, committees, country houses, political speeches, minor poets, warm beer and games of cricket whose rules appear to have been devised principally to prevent anything decisive from happening before tea.

Commissioned by his Welsh friend Evan Davies to write a book explaining the English, Donald begins observing them in their natural habitats. He ventures into Fleet Street, where journalists produce certainty by the column inch; Westminster, where politicians produce speeches instead; and the countryside, where everybody knows his proper place and is prepared to spend an entire weekend ensuring nobody forgets it. England emerges as a nation held together by class distinctions, good manners, bad organisation and an unshakeable belief that muddling through is morally superior to planning ahead.

The novel’s most celebrated episode is its village cricket match, a sporting contest in which athletic ability is treated with suspicion and the chief qualifications are eccentricity, social obligation and possession of the correct trousers. Players wander on and off, private feuds flourish, the scoreboard becomes speculative and victory remains considerably less important than ensuring lunch takes place. Anyone who understands cricket will recognise it immediately; anyone who does not may finally understand why understanding it was never the point.

MacDonell’s satire is sharp but genial. He skewers pompous editors, ambitious authors, country-house bores and politicians without suggesting that the alternative would necessarily be any improvement. His England is ridiculous, infuriating and oddly lovable: a place capable of turning inefficiency into tradition and tradition into a reason why nothing should ever be altered before the next committee meeting.

First published in 1933 and awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, England, Their England became a much-loved comic portrait of interwar society. Its humour sits comfortably beside P. G. Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh and Jerome K. Jerome, though MacDonell’s particular speciality is making the national character look absurd without quite allowing anyone else permission to criticise it. This 1934 Albatross edition is number 95 in the celebrated Continental Library series, published in English for readers abroad who presumably wished to study the English from a safe distance.

Nearly a century later, much of it remains suspiciously recognisable. Newspapers are still excitable, politicians still speak at length, village organisations still contain ancient rivalries, and cricket continues to offer several days of activity that may conclude without a winner. The costumes have changed, but the committee minutes are probably still awaiting approval.

This copy is in Good condition, bearing the ordinary signs of age and previous reading expected from a book that has been observing the English since 1934. It has no ISBN because it comes from an age when books were permitted to exist without submitting a thirteen-digit application. Sold by Crappy Old Books, an English institution founded on thrift, clutter and the firm conviction that everything will be properly sorted out after tea.

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