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Sir Arthur Bryant as a 20th-century Victorian

2004; Routledge; Volume: 30; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2004.03.003

1873-541X

Julia Stapleton,

Irish and British Studies

Abstract This article considers some of the late-Victorian and Edwardian influences on the popular historian, Sir Arthur Bryant (1899–1985) in the 20th century. It emphasises Bryant's role in strengthening patriotism and English national identity in the unpropitious circumstances of interwar and postwar Britain. The article examines his conservative cast of mind, one he communicated through best-selling histories and prolific journalism. It emphasises his increasing distance from organised Conservatism after the Second World War and the sympathy he attracted in some quarters of the Labour movement at the end of his life, as well as earlier on. However, it concludes that Bryant is a vital link between the late-19th century ‘moment’ of Englishness and its recent revival among Conservative thinkers, publicists and politicians. Notes 1 I am extremely grateful to Reba Soffer for her comments on an earlier draft of this article. I am also indebted to the Arts and Humanities Research Board for funding my initial research on Bryant. I gratefully acknowledge the permission of David Higham Associates on behalf of the Estate of Sir Arthur Bryant to use unpublished Bryant material. My thanks are also due to the Trustees of the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King's College London for permission to quote from the Bryant Papers. 2 On the context of Woolf's remark in the ‘Manet and Post-Impressionists’ exhibition in London in December 1910 and other events of that year, see Peter Stansky, On or About December 1910: Early Bloomsbury and its Intimate World (Cambridge, MA, 1996). 3 S. Pederson & P. Mandler (eds.), After the Victorians: Private Conscience and Public Duty in Modern Britain (London, 1994); see also M. Bevir, ‘The Long Nineteenth Century in Intellectual History’, Journal of Victorian Culture, 6:2 (2001), 313-335. 4 Bevir, ‘The Long Nineteenth Century in Intellectual History’, p. 329. 5 Reba N. Soffer, ‘The Long Nineteenth Century of Conservative Thought’, in G.K. Behlmer & F.M. Leventhal (eds.), Singular Continuities: Tradition, Nostalgia, and Identity in Modern British Culture (Stanford, 2000), 143–162. 6 Illustrated London News (hereafter, ILN: n.b.Bryant's ILN articles had titles after 1967; before then they were simply headed ‘Our Notebook’), 13 November 1954, p. 832. As we shall see, Bryant was not quite at one with all that Gladstone contributed to the Victorian legacy. While hailing the poignancy of Gladstone's remark that it is ‘freedom that fits men for freedom’, Bryant used this to defend the continuing need for British imperial rule. The dictum was not of universal application, he maintained, and would only pertain to Africa, at least, after a ‘long educative process’: ILN, 19 May 1962, p. 790. 7 G.M. Young, Portrait of an Age: Victorian England (1977; London, 1936), p. 184. 8 ILN, 26 May 1951, p. 838. 9 ILN, 3 Dec 1955, p. 956; see also 17 August 1957, p. 252. 10 ILN, 26 May 1951, p. 838. 11 ‘Not Finished Yet’, ILN, July 1975, p. 22; and 5 August 1967, p. 14. See also ‘Remembering the Somme’, ILN, March 1976, p. 26. 12 ILN, 20 March 1965, p. 8. 13 Bryant, The Lion and the Unicorn: A Historian's Testament (London, 1969), pp. 20–21. 14 ILN, 9 August 1952, p. 206. 15 ILN, 1 November 1958; see also J.H. Grainger's Patriotisms: Britain, 1900–1940 (London, 1986), p. 53. 16 See Soffer, ‘The Long Nineteenth Century of Conservative Thought’, pp. 148, 151. Bryant was sympathetic to the postwar pessimism of Toynbee and Butterfield, particularly what he took to be its ‘medievalism’: see ILN, 30 August 1952, p. 320. However, he continued to believe in the capacity of British national life to renew itself, despite the many aspects of the postwar world he deplored. See ILN, 22 August 1953, p. 274; 12 November, 1955, p. 816; and ‘Fashionable Illusions’, ILN, 29 March, 1969, p. 16. On this he differed from his friend, A.L. Rowse. 17 Bryant to Jack (Lord) Lawson, 16 June 1949, Durham University Library. 18 P. Mandler, “Race” and “Nation” in mid-Victorian thought’, in S. Collini, R. Whatmore, and B. Young (eds.), History, Religion and Culture: British Intellectual History, 1750–1950 (Cambridge, 2000), p. 233. 19 English Saga (1840–1940) (London, 1940); The Years of Endurance, 1793–1802 (London, 1942); and Years of Victory, 1802–1812 (London, 1944). Trevelyan and Churchill only published their major works on English history towards the end of the war and after. 20 Bryant, ILN, 31 August 1968, p. 14, in The Lion and the Unicorn, p. 200. 21 In the Bryant Papers (Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King's College London) (B32) there is a table card of toasts for a dinner in honour of Joseph Chamberlain given by the Birmingham Liberal Club in 1881. H.W. Edmunds was to respond to the last toast to ‘our club’. Also included is the property details of the family home, ‘Grey Friars’ in Edgbaston, when it was sold in 1910. It was a substantial residence, with ‘one of the most spacious’ winter gardens in Birmingham. 22 ILN, 7 April 1945, p. 362. 23 ‘The Making of a Historian’, ILN, August 1978, p. 27. 24 ILN, 11 June 1966, p. 14. 25 Sir William Napier, History of the War in the Peninsula, 6 Vols. (London, 1826–1840); Sir Archibald Alison, History of Europe from the Commencement of the French Revolution in 1789 to the Restoration of the Bourbons in 1815, 10 Vols. (Edinburgh, 1833–1842). On Alison see M. Michie, An Enlightenment Tory in Victorian Scotland: the Career of Sir Archibald Alison (Montreal, 1997). 26 ‘The Making of a Historian’, ILN, August 1978, p. 27. ‘C.M’, or Maria Graham, afterwards Lady Callcott, Little Arthur's History of England, (London, 1835); Margaret Bertha Synge, The Story of the World for the Children of the British Empire, 5 vols. (London, 1903); R. Kipling Puck of Pook's Hill (London, 1906); and Rewards and Fairies (London, 1910). 27 ILN, 23 April 1938, p. 694, quoted in Pamela Street, Arthur Bryant: Portrait of a Historian (London, 1979). 28 ILN, 16 May 1942, p. 566. 29 Bryant wrote of his enduring boyhood admiration of Chesterton as a ‘great English prophet’ in letter to Chesterton, 16 December 1933, BL.Add.Mss 73235, f.170. 30 I am very grateful to the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC), Berkhamsted, for generously supplying these figures for the Illustrated London News. The figures for The Spectator and New Statesman in the early 1950s are taken from Bevis Hillier, John Betjeman: New Fame, New Love (London, 2002), p. 425. On the decline of deference in this period, see D. Cannadine, The Rise and Fall of Class in Britain (New York, 1999), pp. 159–164. 31 See the Bryant Papers, F17–F22. 32 Copies of the Illustrated London News at the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds, are from the Senior Common Room; on Stourport see A.W. Baldwin to Bryant, 1 April 1960, Bryant Papers, C62. 33 Warner was the author of the school text-book, Landmarks in English Industrial History (London, 1899). The book went through eleven editions by 1910. 34 ILN, 22 March 1947, p. 282. 35 ‘A Nineteenth-Century Tragedy’, ILN, 4 July 1970, p. 26. 36 ILN, 28 December 1963, p. 1056. 37 Among Bryant's papers is a cutting of Kipling's inspirational summons to fight, his poem, ‘For All We Have and Are’ from the Times Recruiting Supplement, 3 November 1915, p. 16: Bryant Papers, R15 (4 of 4). On the poem itself see D. Gilmour, The Long Recessional: the Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling (London, 2002), pp. 250–251. 38 Bryant to his mother, 30 January 1919, Bryant Papers, B13. 39 Bryant, The Story of England: Makers of the Realm (London, 1953). 40 Bryant, The Lion and the Unicorn, p. 33; Street, Arthur Bryant, p. 57. 41 ILN, 10 January 1942, p. 37; and 11 April 1964, p. 554. 42 C.W. Dilke and S. Wilkinson, Imperial Defence (London, 1892). 43 On the Navy League's activities, see Andrew S. Thompson, ‘The Language of Imperialism and the Meanings of Empire: Imperial Discourse in British Politics, 1895–1914’, Journal of British Studies, 36 (April 1997), 148–149, 171–176. See also F. Coetzee, For Party or Country: Nationalism and the Dilemmas of Popular Conservatism in Edwardian England (New York, 1990). 44 Bryant to his mother, 9 March 1920, Bryant Papers, B14. 45 ILN, 2 September 1967, p. 12. 46 Bryant, ‘Kings and Queens’, Punch (CLIX), 22 September 1920, p. 224. 47 Street, Arthur Bryant, Chapter 6. 48 Neal R. McCrillis, The British Conservative Party in the Age of Universal Suffrage: Popular Conservatism, 1918–1929 (Columbus, Ohio, 1998), pp. 165–174. 49 On Baldwin's Conservatism, and the role of Davidson in promoting it, see P. Williamson, Stanley Baldwin: Conservative Leadership and National Values (Cambridge, 1999), p. 71. For Bryant's close work with Davidson, especially in founding the National Book Association in 1936, see the Davidson Papers, House of Lords Record Office. See Bryant's biography of Baldwin written for his retirement as Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin (London, 1937). 50 See A. Roberts, Eminent Chuchillians (1995; London, 1994), p. 292; Baldwin to Queen Mary, 15 January 1937, in P. Williamson and E. Baldwin (eds.), Baldwin Papers: A Conservative Statesman, 1908–1947 (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 429–430. 51 See Roberts, Eminent Churchillians, Chapter 6; also E.H.H. Green, Ideologies of Conservatism (Oxford, 2002), Chapter 5. 52 The Spirit of Conservatism (London, 1929), p. 76 (my emphasis). 53 The Spirit of Conservatism, p. 75. 54 Keith G. Feiling, ‘A Wind on the Heath: Night Thoughts on England’, The Observer, 8 December 1940, p. 3. 55 See the fine epilogue of Grainger, Patriotisms; of the interwar years, he wrote, ‘For it was at this time that a certain diffidence about revealing the moral wealth of the patria became ingrained’, p. 329. 56 The Spirit of Conservatism, p. 75. 57 The Spirit of Conservatism, pp. 168–169, 158. 58 Bryant, The National Character (London, 1934), p. 154. 59 For example, see Bryant, Britain Awake! (London, 1940), p. 32–33. ‘…there is admittedly a marked Jewish element among the minority who exploit the world's financial machinery. In some countries this has been the cause of a cruel and undiscriminating persecution. Yet such exploitation where it exists is only an inevitable result of a vital race's being without a settled home and the effect on its members of constant uncertainty… A proper national policy [in the allegedly affected countries] would in any case render such exploitation impossible.’ Written before the outbreak of war, Bryant's Unfinished Victory (London, 1940) was less guarded in its treatment of the Jews in Germany, although it still condemned their persecution by the Nazis. For condemnation of Bryant on account of his anti-semitism, see Roberts, Eminent Chuchillians, Chapter 6. 60 The Spirit of Conservatism, p. 79. For a fascinating study of the role of mass motoring in creating ill-planned settlements such as Peacehaven in Sussex in the interwar period, and associated reactions, see Peter Thorold, The Motoring Age: The Automobile and Britain, 1896–1939 (London: Profile Books, 2003). 61 ‘The Consciousness of Modernity? Liberalism and the English “National Character”, 1870–1914’, in M. Daunton & B. Rieger (eds.), Meanings of Modernity: Britain from the Late-Victorian Era to World War II (London, 2001), pp. 132–137; see also Krishan Kumar, The Making of English National Identity (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 196–202. 62 P. Mandler, The Rise and Fall of the Stately Home (New Haven, 1997), pp. 226–227, 258. 63 Bryant to Dawney, 27 September 1934, Bryant, File 1, BBC Written Archives Centre, Reading; Dawney to Bryant, 29 September 1934, Bryant Papers, C24; ‘C.A.S.’ to Bryant, 5 October 1934, Bryant File 1, BBC Written Archives. On anti-preservationist attitudes at the BBC at this time, see P. Mandler, ‘Against “Englishness”: English Culture and the Limits to Rural Nostalgia, 1850–1940’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series, vol. 7 (1997), p. 173. 64 See the enthusiastic response from such listeners to the series ‘The National Character’ in the Bryant Papers, C24. 65 Street, Arthur Bryant, Chapter 6. 66 ILN, 11 December 1937, p. 1042. 67 ILN, 25 December 1943, p. 702. He did discriminate between suburbs, favouring those in Middlesex and Surrey over the ‘dense outskirts of London’: ILN, 10 July 1937, p. 56, and 12 March 1938, p. 422. 68 ILN, 11 October 1952, p. 578. 69 Most prominently, G.M. Trevelyan and Ernest Barker. On Trevelyan's defence of the Victorians against the sneers of Bloomsbury, see D. Cannadine, G.M. Trevelyan: A Life in History (London, 1992), pp. 44–45. On Barker's friendship with Bryant in the 1930s, despite their Whig-Tory differences, see J. Stapleton, ‘Resisting the Centre at the Extremes: “English” liberalism in the political thought of interwar Britain’, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 1:3 (1999), p. 285. Barker was a self-confessed ‘mid-Victorian’ in tastes and sensibilities as late as 1949: see his Ramsay Muir Memorial Lecture, Change and Continuity (London, 1949), p. 9. Bryant continued to receive praise from historical scholars for the values which informed his writing as late as the 1970s: see the correspondence with Geoffrey Dickens in the Bryant Papers, E1. On Bryant's wide following among the high-Tory middle class in the 1960s, see the perceptive review of his anti-Common Market tract, A Choice for Destiny, by Bob Pitman, ‘A voice the Tories must heed hits out at the Market’, The Sunday Express, 19 August 1962, p. 6. 70 For an account of this friendship, see J. Stapleton, Political Intellectuals and Public Identities in Britain since 1850 (Manchester, 2001), pp. 151–154. On the patriotism which shaped British socialism in its formative years and which explains the friendship between Bryant and Lawson, and prominent Labour figures still later in the century, see Paul Ward, Red Flag and Union Jack: Englishness, Patriotism and the British Left, 1881–1924 (London, 1998). 71 R.H.S. Crossman, ‘Sedatives, Mild and Strong’, New Statesman and Nation, 19 February 1938, p. 294. 72 Even The Times and The Daily Telegraph were beginning to grow weary of Bryant in the early 1960s. See for example A.P. Ryan, ‘Sulphur and Lightning Among Plantagenet Splendours’, The Times, 28 November 1963, p. 15d; and A. Duggan, ‘The English March Forward’, The Daily Telegraph, 29 November 1963. 73 See D. MacCarthy, ‘Light from the Past’, The Sunday Times, 8 November 1942, p. 3; R. Mortimer, ‘England, their England’, The Sunday Times, 10 December 1967, p. 54; and G. Barraclough, ‘Popular History’, The Observer, 13 December 1953, p. 9. 74 The first volume based on the Alanbrooke diaries, The Turn of the Tide (London, 1957), sold 75,000 copies in the home market during the first four months of publication. Both medieval books, The Story of England and its sequel, The Age of Chivalry (London, 1963), were published to coincide with the Christmas season and sold over 33,000 copies in the first month. All these figures are in the Bryant Papers (D59). Sales for the medieval works were massively increased when they became a World Books Choice: the expected print run of Makers of the Realm when nominated as such was 225,000. See (Mark?) Collins to Bryant, 23 April 1954, Bryant Papers, D41. 75 Bryant, Macaulay (London, 1932); King Charles II (London, 1931). 76 Bryant, Macaulay, p. 160. 77 Bryant, Macaulay, pp. 142–143. 78 Bryant, Macaulay, p. 106. 79 Bryant, Macaulay, p. 102. 80 J. M. Lee, Social Leaders and Public Persons: A Study of County Government in Cheshire since 1888 (Oxford, 1963), 95. 81 Bryant, Samuel Pepys: The Years of Peril (Cambridge, 1935), p. xi. 82 Bryant, Macaulay, pp. 99–102. 83 Bryant, ‘On Discovering the Past was Real’, Historian's Holiday (London, 1951), pp. 44–58. 84 Bryant, Macaulay, p. 102. 85 ‘Short Notices’, The National Review, no. 598, December 1932, p. 795. Trevelyan guessed that the anonymous reviewer was Firth in a letter to Bryant, 25 December 1932, Bryant Papers, E3. 86 Trevelyan to Bryant, 15 November 1945, Bryant Papers, E3. 87 Bryant gave an interesting account of the visit in the ILN, 28 December 1963, p. 1056. 88 Trevelyan to Bryant, 20 July 1932; and 6 August 1932, Bryant Papers, E3. 89 Trevelyan to Bryant, 8 September 1932, Bryant Papers, E3. 90 ILN, 11 August 1962, p. 200. 91 Cannadine, Trevelyan, pp. 119–120, 122, 125. 92 His lack of partisanship was praised by Trevelyan in his review of Bryant's The Years of Endurance, 1793–1802 (London, 1942), The Daily Dispatch, 13 November 1942. 93 ILN, 17 August 1957, p. 252. Birrell's essay, ‘The Muse of History’, was published in Obiter Dicta, second series (London, 1887). For Trevelyan's response to Bury, see ‘The Latest View of History’, The Independent Review, 1 (1903–1904), pp. 395–414, reprinted in Clio: a Muse (London, 1913). 94 The influence of this conception of history is evident in a poignant piece which Bryant wrote for his Illustrated London News readers on what he termed ‘the magic of history’: ILN, 12 September 1959, p. 218. 95 On Bryant's painstaking method of writing history rooted in fact, see ILN, 31 July 1954, p. 166. On his dismay at the suspicion in which he was held, see his long, somewhat rambling, but illuminating draft letter to A.G. Dickens, 5 March [1984] 1985 [sic], Bryant Papers, E1. 96 Quoted in Robert Spence Watson, The National Liberal Federation: From its Commencement to the General Election of 1906 (London, 1907), p. 289. 97 See Gilmour, The Long Recessional. 98 Kumar has recently emphasised the cosmopolitan nature of the ‘English nationalism’ expressed in this and other passages of Milton's Areopagitica: Kumar The Making of English National Identity, pp. 107–108, 127–128. But as a disciple of Kipling, Bryant would have rejected any tension between this reading of Milton and British imperialism. 99 Bryant, English Saga, pp. 256–258. 100 English Saga, p. 273. 101 ILN, 9 October 1965, p. 20. 102 Bryant to his mother, 8 June 1919, Bryant Papers, B13. J.R. Seeley, Life and Times of Stein, or Germany and Prussia in the Napoleonic Age (Cambridge, 1878). 103 English Saga, p. 333. 104 J.W. Burrow, A Liberal Descent: Victorian Historians and the English Past (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 276–277. 105 Bryant, The Story of England: Makers of the Realm (London, 1953), p. 88. On Seeley's lack of interest in nationhood per se, and his ‘scientific’ view of history, see R.N. Soffer, ‘History and Religion: J.R. Seeley and the Burden of the Past’, in R.W. Davis & R.J. Helmstadter (eds.), Religion and Irreligion in Victorian Society: Essays in Honour of R.K. Webb (London, 1992), p. 142. 106 Bryant, Set in a Silver Sea (London, 1984), pp. xviii–xix. 107 ILN, 27 September 1969, p. 17. 108 Quoted in ILN, 21 November 1936, reproduced in Humanity in Politics, p. 52. 109 Bryant, The Story of England, p. 91. 110 The Lion and the Unicorn, p. 223. 111 Gilmour, The Long Recessional, pp. 266–267. 112 ILN, 12 January 1957, p. 52. 113 ILN, 29 December 1956, p. 1100. 114 ILN, 19 May 1962, p. 790; 4 August 1962, p. 164; and 20 July 1963, p. 78. On his association with Beaverbrook, see Robert Dewey, ‘National Identity and Opposition to Britain's First Attempt to Join Europe, 1961–63’, unpublished D. Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 2003. D. Phil thesis, 2001. 115 ILN, 2 February 1952, p. 158. 116 ILN, 16 June 1962, p. 960. 117 ILN, 9 October 1965, p. 20. 118 ILN, ‘Powell and the Hidden Opinions’, 7 December 1968, p. 20; ‘Why the door must be shut’, 9 March 1968, p. 14; Bryant, The Lion and the Unicorn, p. 286. (This reference to voluntary repatriation was excluded from the original ILN article, ‘To Reduce the Tensions’, 28 June 1969, p. 12.) See also Bryant's opposition to the Race Relations Act of 1968 on the grounds of its ‘restrictive and coercive’ nature, ILN, ‘To Reduce the Tensions’, 28 June 1969, p. 8. However, like Powell, Bryant denounced racial discrimination: see ILN, 20 September 1958, p. 460. 119 For Bryant's criticism of the abandonment of the planning laws by Churchill's government see ILN, 30 June 1962, p. 1038. For an illuminating account of the context for Bryant's remarks in this respect, see P. Mandler, ‘New Towns for Old: The Fate of the Town Centre’, in B. Conekin, Frank Mort, & Chris Waters (eds.), Moments of Modernity: Reconstructing Britain, 1945–1964 (London,1999), 208–227. Bryant criticised Macmillan's infamous assertion in 1957 that ‘most of our people have never had it so good’ in ILN, 29 August 1964, p. 284. On Macmillan's drive to ‘modernize’ the British economy, through ‘interdependence’ with Europe and failing that, internally, see Green, Ideologies of Conservatism, pp. 189–190. 120 ILN, 22 May 1965, p. 12; and 5 December 1970, p. 12. 121 On Carlyle, Ruskin, and Disraeli, and the corruption of their legacy by modern socialism, see ILN, 26 June 1948, p. 706; and 3 July 1948, p. 2. 122 For Bryant's enthusiasm for Mrs Thatcher's ‘revival’ of patriotism in Britain, see ‘The Road to Salvation’, ILN, November 1975, p. 26; ‘A Question of Humanity’, December 1975, p. 33; ‘One Nation or no Nation’, ILN, March 1979, p. 27. For his criticism of her economic policies, see ‘The Two Equalities’, ILN, June 1981, p. 22; ‘The two-handed engine at the door’, September 1981, p. 36. See also ‘National Wealth and National Poverty’, August 1980, p. 28, and ‘Inflation and the Falklands Factor’, September 1982, p. 19. See Mrs Thatcher's emollient response to Bryant's protestations to her on this subject, 16 May 1982, Bryant Papers, E64. 123 Michael Foot attended the celebration to mark Bryant's 85th Birthday at Vintner's Hall, London, on 20 February 1984. Also present were the trade unionist Jack Jones, Peter Shore, James Callaghan, and Harold Wilson. Harold Macmillan was also among the guests. For photographs, see Bryant Papers, Add.2, Box 2 of 3. Foot also attended Bryant's memorial service in Westminster Abbey, 15 March 1985. On the context of the publication of ‘Cato’, Guilty Men (London, 1940), see Philip Williamson, ‘Baldwin's Reputation: Politics and History, 1937–1967’, The Historical Journal, 47, 1 (2004), pp. 134–138. 124 C. Attlee, review of Bryant's The Age of Chivalry, ‘Birth Pangs of the National State’, The Sunday Times, 24 November 1963, p. 35; on Bryant's praise of Gaitskell, see ILN, 2 February 1963, p. 144, and for Gaitskell reciprocal praise, see the letters to Bryant over Common Market entry in the Bryant Papers, H4; and there is a newspaper cutting of a protest against Common Market membership in which both Shore and Bryant participated in Bryant Papers, H4. 125 On the divisions within the Labour movement engendered by ‘affluence’ in the late 1950s and 1960s, see L. Black, The Political Culture of the Left in Affluent Britain, 1951–1964 (Basingstoke, 2003). 126 Harold Wilson, ‘A Book in my Life’, The Spectator, 249, 2 October 1982, pp. 26–27. 127 ‘Bruce P. Lenman, ‘Forever England?’, History Today (September 1986), pp. 52–53. 128 See the review of Bryant's Set in a Silver Sea (1984) by Gerald Kaufman in the Manchester Evening News, 1 March 1984, p. 35; and the review of The Search for Justice (1991) by G. Wheatcroft, The Sunday Telegraph, 23 March 1991. 129 See Roberts, Eminent Churchillians, Chapter 6; also P. Wright, The Village that Died for England: the Strange Story of Tyneham (London, 1995), esp. pp. 234–240. 130 Kumar, The Making of English National Identity, Chapter 7. 131 Although the affinity between Bryant's English nationalism and that of Heffer and other contemporary conservative thinkers is noted by Andrew Roberts in his preface to a reprint of Bryant's Spirit of England (1982; London, 2001).