Arthur Aughey is Professor of Politics at the University of Ulster, Jordanstown. Christine Berberich is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Portsmouth.

• Krishan Kumar: PrefaceSection one: Englishness in discourse and opinion1: Susan Condor, sense & sensibility: the conversational etiquette of english national self-identification2: John Curtice, is the English lion ready to roar?3: Paul Thomas, all white? Englishness, ‘race’ and ethnic identities4: Chris Bryant, towards a cosmopolitan england?Section two: Englishness in politics and institutions5: Stephen Ingle, conservatives and Englishness: A conversation between party and nation6: Matthew Beech, the left and Englishness7: Simon Lee, Gordon Brown and the negation of England8: Philip Norton, the Englishness of Westminster9: Colin Copus, Englishness and local government: Reflecting a nation’s past or merely an administrative convenience? Section three: Englishness in history and imagination10: Julia Stapleton, faith, people & place: the English union in the writings of arthur mee and G.K. Chesterton11: Gary Day, the changing face of englishness: history, culture and character12: Patrick Parrinder, from Hardy to Larkin: Poets and novelists in national conversationChristine Berberich & Arthur Aughey, AfterwordReferences

A most thoughtful set of essays offering 'intimations' of that most nebulous thing, English national identity. They approach this will-o-the-wisp from several directions – sociological, political, literary – and together weave a conversation of an Oakeshottian kind, intellectual as well as pleasing. Indeed, the claim of the editors that England cannot be grasped in definitions, manifestos and deductions but only in an open-ended conversational flow seems most apt.

Arthur Aughey is Professor of Politics at the University of Ulster, Jordanstown. Christine Berberich is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Portsmouth.

• Krishan Kumar: PrefaceSection one: Englishness in discourse and opinion1: Susan Condor, sense & sensibility: the conversational etiquette of english national self-identification2: John Curtice, is the English lion ready to roar?3: Paul Thomas, all white? Englishness, ‘race’ and ethnic identities4: Chris Bryant, towards a cosmopolitan england?Section two: Englishness in politics and institutions5: Stephen Ingle, conservatives and Englishness: A conversation between party and nation6: Matthew Beech, the left and Englishness7: Simon Lee, Gordon Brown and the negation of England8: Philip Norton, the Englishness of Westminster9: Colin Copus, Englishness and local government: Reflecting a nation’s past or merely an administrative convenience? Section three: Englishness in history and imagination10: Julia Stapleton, faith, people & place: the English union in the writings of arthur mee and G.K. Chesterton11: Gary Day, the changing face of englishness: history, culture and character12: Patrick Parrinder, from Hardy to Larkin: Poets and novelists in national conversationChristine Berberich & Arthur Aughey, AfterwordReferences

A most thoughtful set of essays offering 'intimations' of that most nebulous thing, English national identity. They approach this will-o-the-wisp from several directions – sociological, political, literary – and together weave a conversation of an Oakeshottian kind, intellectual as well as pleasing. Indeed, the claim of the editors that England cannot be grasped in definitions, manifestos and deductions but only in an open-ended conversational flow seems most apt.

Arthur Aughey is Professor of Politics at the University of Ulster, Jordanstown. Christine Berberich is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Portsmouth.

• Krishan Kumar: PrefaceSection one: Englishness in discourse and opinion1: Susan Condor, sense & sensibility: the conversational etiquette of english national self-identification2: John Curtice, is the English lion ready to roar?3: Paul Thomas, all white? Englishness, ‘race’ and ethnic identities4: Chris Bryant, towards a cosmopolitan england?Section two: Englishness in politics and institutions5: Stephen Ingle, conservatives and Englishness: A conversation between party and nation6: Matthew Beech, the left and Englishness7: Simon Lee, Gordon Brown and the negation of England8: Philip Norton, the Englishness of Westminster9: Colin Copus, Englishness and local government: Reflecting a nation’s past or merely an administrative convenience? Section three: Englishness in history and imagination10: Julia Stapleton, faith, people & place: the English union in the writings of arthur mee and G.K. Chesterton11: Gary Day, the changing face of englishness: history, culture and character12: Patrick Parrinder, from Hardy to Larkin: Poets and novelists in national conversationChristine Berberich & Arthur Aughey, AfterwordReferences

A most thoughtful set of essays offering 'intimations' of that most nebulous thing, English national identity. They approach this will-o-the-wisp from several directions – sociological, political, literary – and together weave a conversation of an Oakeshottian kind, intellectual as well as pleasing. Indeed, the claim of the editors that England cannot be grasped in definitions, manifestos and deductions but only in an open-ended conversational flow seems most apt.