Urban Dreams and Rural Reality: Land and Landscape in English Culture, 1920–45

Abstract

On May 12th, 1926 Stanley Baldwin announced the end of the General Strike in a radio broadcast to the nation. The announcement was followed by a choir singing Parry's now familiarJerusalemwith its resounding climactic affirmation of ‘England's green and pleasant Land’.1It is hard to resist the speculation that this was Baldwin's choice as much as Reith's, since the Conservative Prime Minister had from the outset of his political career been identified as an ordinary man rooted deeply in the English countryside.2Baldwin's private correspondence demonstrates that his attachment to ‘our eternal hills’ was entirely genuine, but there can be little doubt that this was also an image that he consciously cultivated, and which – via his mastery of the new instruments of mass communication – he was able to convey to a wide and popular audience. To this extent he might be thought of as a Tory populist: as J.C. Squire noted in theObserverreview of Baldwin's 1926 collection of his speeches, entitledOn England(released just before the General Strike), ‘this is the work of a thoroughly representative Englishman: not the common man, but one expressing what the common man feels and cannot say for himself’. These ‘common’ themes and sentiments ranged across a number of issues from Shakespeare to the topical ‘Peace in Industry’, but pride of place in the volume was granted to his definitive statement on national identity, given in May 1924 ‘to celebrate our country and our Patron Saint’ at the Annual Dinner of the Royal Society of St. George, and entitled plainly and unambiguously ‘England’.

Wild Flowers in the Wrong Field are Weeds! Examining Farmers' Constructions of Conservation

“…In turn this is significant for the rest of the population-given the symbolic relationship between national identity and the rural landscape [as has been explored by Lowenthal (1991), Miller (1995) and Short (1991) among others].…”

Landscape and Embodiment in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes and The True Heart

“…22 Rural environments became sites of ideological investment in which preservationists responded to interwar uncertainties of 'national purpose and identity, […] the question of what England stood for'. 23 The dominant narrative upheld the antagonistic town/ country dichotomy, pitching a threatened rural England against fastdeveloping towns and an increasingly urban population. 24 Yet Matless warns against the homogenisation of cultural expressions of ruralism, noting the rhetorical diversity between conservatism and progressive modernity.…”

‘Rural’ rhetoric in 1930s unemployment relief schemes

“…4 An idealised southern rural landscape was considered the authentic England in which national moral values resided. 5 Many feared that this countryside was threatened by urban tourists, suburban sprawl, and industrial, modern or capitalist society. 6 This led to a number of varied responses.…”