A. N. Wilson. After the Victorians: The Decline of Britain in the World. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005. xii + 609 pp. $32.50 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-374-10198-5.
Reviewed by Rohan McWilliam (Department of History, Anglia Ruskin University)
Published on H-Albion (November, 2006)
A. N. Wilson and Edward, George, Edward, George
A. N. Wilson is a force of nature. Novels, histories, journalism, and biographies leap from his Chestertonian pen along with the odd bon mot and a delight in troublemaking. A self-appointed chronicler of English manners and foibles, he writes from the not unfertile position of the conservative maverick. By this I mean that he displays an affection for national institutions and traditions, but he is not deceived about their shortcomings and limitations. He celebrates the pragmatists rather than the ideologues and is ever willing to expose the distance between soaring rhetoric and sordid deeds.
A sequel to Wilson's Victorians (2002) (whose subject I suspect was more to his taste), After the Victorians is very much a popular history written for a non-academic audience and should be assessed as such. Like the earlier volume, this is intended as a "portrait of an age." It covers the years from Victoria's death in 1901 to the accession of Elizabeth II. Wilson's waggish agent apparently suggested that the book should be titled "Edward, George, Edward, George" after the monarchs in between. The English paperback edition has been given the subtitle, The World Our Parents Knew, which perhaps explains Wilson's attraction to the subject but which does not give much away about the contents of the book. The subtitle of the American edition is The Decline of Britain in the World which is not much more helpful as the issue of "decline" is ever present but never discussed in a coherent way, although the book ends predictably with Dean Acheson's observation that, after the Second World War, the British lost an empire and failed to find a role (p. 528).
Wilson's is not the first book to be titled After the Victorians. Peter Mandler and Susan Pedersen's edited collection of the same name examined the ways in which the Victorian values of public duty and service continued to influence the world view of leading intellectuals and political figures in the first half of the twentieth century despite Bloomsbury disdain for all things Victorian.[1] Wilson's book unfortunately contains no such clear theme nor does it really attempt a distinctive overall evaluation of the era for a mass public. It remains unclear whether this was in any way a distinctive period or whether the generations it encompasses had an obvious character. However, along the way Wilson manages some careful observations about transformations that he clearly cares about. He is very good on the demise of Anglican England, which he evokes with a sympathetic but weary eye. As one would expect, he is strong on literature and art, but he also manages sometimes to surprise as when he describes the mania following the advent of the crossword puzzle. To write about Britain in this period is to attempt, to some extent, a global history. Wilson takes in Britain's relationship with Europe and the empire as well as the United States. We read a fair amount about India although Australia and Canada are barely mentioned.
The book is really made up of series of pen portraits of the period's leading personalities from Noel Coward to Doctor Crippen. The lives of the majority of the population do not get much attention except as bystanders, consumers of new technological innovations, and audiences at the movies. There are some odd absences. Stanley Baldwin appears on occasion but Wilson is not terribly interested in him, even though he was arguably the most important political figure of the interwar period. In a different vein, the iconic figures of George Formby and Gracie Fields do not feature (presumably because they were not to Wilson's taste). Perhaps the most eye-catching section is his defence of Edward VIII. History, according to Wilson, has been "extraordinarily babyish" in its dealings with the King (p.336). He will have no truck with criticisms of Edward's fascist leanings, which he feels have been inflated. Edward would have made a decent enough monarch who would have enjoyed the same kind of support as his brother during the war. Baldwin does feature in the account of the Abdication, but very much as a villain.
Inevitably, much of the book is taken up with Winston Churchill who makes his first appearance on page 12. Churchill provides a link with Wilson's earlier book as his rise to the premiership in 1940 is celebrated as the return of the Victorian aristocracy, although Churchill's love of the high life contrasted with Austerity Britain (p. 391). Wilson enjoys the fact that Churchill devoted much his career to combating socialism and then presided over arguably the most socialist government in Britain's history during the Second World War. This love of paradox is everywhere in the book. Wilson also delights in making unexpected connections, although some of these do not work. His attempt to discuss the "Special Relationship" of Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt by starting with the relationship of the comedy duo Laurel and Hardy is a pratfall in itself.
We glimpse Wilson's overall view occasionally, such as when he argues that during the interwar period "a democratic decency did evolve, and though the British population underwent sore economic hardship during these years, it also enjoyed far greater political stability and freedom than almost any other country in Europe" (p. 242). Wilson can be testy with what he sees as the lazy thinking that dismissed leading businessmen as villains: "Even when an enterprise produced as many jobs, and as much money for other people, as ICI, a figure like (Sir Alfred) Mond could still be written about as if he were Mr. Melmotte, the cunning and entirely fraudulent capitalist of Trollope's The Way We Live Now" (pp. 282-283).
I noticed two important influences on the book. The first is Malcolm Muggeridge who makes a large number of appearances and usually gets full marks for seeing through pretensions, and exposing cant and hypocrisy, although Wilson does not replicate the disdain for political leaders that Muggeridge essayed in his volume on the Thirties.[2] However, the orthodoxy that interwar Britain was run by second-class minds receives no revision here. Another authority to do pretty well is the Oxford literary scholar John Carey whose book on The Intellectuals and the Masses is only referred to once, but who seems to chime with Wilson's dislike of the snobbery of people who claim to hold progressive views such as the Bloomsbury Group.[3] Again it is bluff, English pragmatism that wins the day against traders in humbug. Whether this will do as a portrait of the intelligentsia is another matter.
Wilson has read widely in the period although some key historians, such as Arthur Marwick and Ross McKibbin, have not been used. He knows his way around the major novelists and poets of the period, and can often evoke the flavor of the era. It is very much a book about England. Scotland and Wales do not feature much, although Ireland does. After the Victorians never quite satisfies, but it is full of incidental pleasures. As the table talk of a meteor of the English literary scene, it works well. Academic historians will, however, want to look elsewhere. This is not one for the student reading lists.
Notes
[1]. Peter Mandler and Susan Pedersen, After the Victorians: Private Conscience and Public Duty in Modern Britain (London: Routledge, 1994).
[2]. Malcolm Muggeridge, The Thirties (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1940).
[3]. John Carey, The Intellectuals and the Masses (London: Faber and Faber, 1992).
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Citation:
Rohan McWilliam. Review of Wilson, A. N., After the Victorians: The Decline of Britain in the World.
H-Albion, H-Net Reviews.
November, 2006.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12564
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