Putting on Some English

Terence Hawkes

  • The Gatekeeper: A Memoir by Terry Eagleton
    Allen Lane, 178 pp, £9.99, January 2002, ISBN 0 7139 9590 4

In the United States, ‘English’ can mean ‘spin’: a deliberate turn put on a ball by striking it so that it swerves. It’s a subtle epithet, perhaps recording a canny colonial take on the larger distortions inseparable from imperial rule. But the truth is that as the English invented ‘Great Britain’ and then began the process of large-scale colonisation, they put quite a lot of English on ‘Englishness’ itself. Broadening as the Empire grew, its characteristics blossomed, not from the blood and soil of a single nation, reflecting its culture or essentialising its way of life, so much as from a vaguely conceived, free-floating notion of ‘humanity’ itself.

You are not Logged In

  • If you have already registered login here
  • If you are a print subscriber using the site for the first time please register here
  • If you are not yet a subscriber you can subscribe here
  • If you are a member of a subscribing institution or University library please login here
  • If you have an Institutional print subscription and online access is not included, find out about our Institutional online subscriptions