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Henry Robarts is a little-known writer whose work includes prose romances, records of state entertainments, and commendatory pamphlets on travel. This article pays particular attention to his celebrations of Sir Francis Drake, which form part of a sub-genre of writing on travel and which provide insights into how voyages of discovery figured in the late-sixteenth-century popular imagination. It considers how Robarts theorises the act of commemoration in these and other texts, and looks at the crucial role he imagines both it and travel to play in shaping England's national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary forms of English identity and nationalism have received sustained attention since the late 1990s. Much of this attention has been framed in terms of English responses to recent constitutional changes in the UK, particularly Scottish and Welsh devolution in 1997. In this paper, I try to understand contemporary sentiments towards Englishness less in terms of political change, and more in terms of its relationship to class. Drawing on qualitative interviews with the ethnic majority respondents, I demonstrate the associations people make between class, inequality and exclusion and being English. In particular, I identify both a decline in social deference and an increase in contempt towards a so-called underclass in people’s talk about being English. In reflecting on this, I suggest that part of the explanation for why people are uneasy about identifying with ‘being English’ relates to an absence of an equal sense of English national membership. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many critics have linked the rise of heritage with a loss of primary manufacturing, an association particularly resonant for industrial living history museums such as Beamish. In the context of pastoral heritage representations, the museum develops competing modernizing and industrial strains in English identity. Through its incorporation of industry, Beamish cuts against the suggestion that people and culture organically spring from native soil. Framing itself as ethnographic, the museum supposes a gap between the culture presented and those of its visitors. Yet this presentation inscribes comforting accounts of class and modernity. Through living history museum techniques, Beamish appeals for its visitors to identify with the represented past so as to suggest more firmly a gulf between present and industrial past. As a result, Beamish is less concerned with presenting the past then shoring up a notion of the present as advanced stage of modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, based on a study carried out in Manchester between 2005 and 2008, contrasts two approaches toward national identity construction expressed by two distinct groups of Polish migrants to the UK; one leads to a strong modern national identity and the other produces a more recent postmodern identity. In both cases, I highlight the constant reproduction of national identity in everyday life and the distinct spatial contexts within which this takes place, and further discuss how national identity has evolved from a primarily collective experience to an individual one, along with the consequences of this transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As well as prompting an urgent reassessment of constitutional and legislative matters, processes of devolution have also contributed to a series of wide-ranging debates on identity in Britain. Yet, outside of survey data and a growing body of work looking to assess the status of minorities in Britain, relatively little has been heard from the wider population. This is particularly true for those who constitute the majority group within Britain, the English. In this paper, I want to offer a complementary perspective by using data from qualitative interviews to explore the ways in which members of the ‘ethnic majority’ in England discuss these issues. The findings suggest a tentative, but noticeable, shift towards an English identity, which is often defined as a necessary response to the increasing assertiveness of ‘other’ national groups within Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

'Europe' and national identity are not necessarily in conflict, as the examples of Spain, Greece, Germany and Italy in their different ways suggest. The same may be true of some of the constituent nations of the British Isles - the Scots, the Irish (North and South), and the Welsh. Europe however poses a particular problem for the English, for longstanding political and cultural reasons. This article explores the different relations of the different parts of the United Kingdom to an increasingly unified Europe. It suggests that, just as there have been many 'Europes', so there have been many different ways of relating to it, depending on particular historical and political circumstances. Of all the peoples of the United Kingdom it is the English who have the greatest difficulty in coming to terms with a future in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]