When Ralph Rackstraw, ordinary seaman and hero of H.M.S. “Pinafore,” asserts his right to marry the captain's daughter, he argues that he may not be noble, but that he is and “remains an Englishman.” In foregrounding this assertion of national pride, but in refraining from offering any precise definition of what that meant (an Englishman was not a “Roosian” or a “Proosian,” and there it was), Gilbert and Sullivan had caught the tenor of the times. As Peter Mandler's study outlines, the nineteenth century saw the rise of an energetic and wide-ranging debate over whether such a thing as a “national character” existed and, particularly, what form the English version took. These were questions more easily asked than answered.

Mandler's work serves as a further reminder of the dramatic importance of 1832, not just structurally, but also culturally, as political reform prompted an outpouring of English efforts at self-description and self-identification. Voters oriented themselves toward parties even more, becoming “plumpers,” not “splitters,” as the late John Phillips noted (John Phillips and Charles Wetherell, “The Great Reform Act of 1832 and the Political Modernization of England,” American Historical Review, April 1995, 411–36). A proudly self-proclaimed “middle class” emerged, in the words of Dror Wahrman. Mandler provides a further example of this political self-fashioning, contending that reformers from Thomas Arnold to J. S. Mill and even the Chartists, bolstered their arguments by producing both a case for the existence of national characteristics and for an English character that contained elements most conducive to the expansion of the franchise; “independence, orderliness, domesticity, industry and activity” (58). Ranging widely through Victorian political, philosophical, and ethnographic tracts, Mandler skillfully explains the various twists and turns the notion of an English national character took between 1850 and 1914, especially in regard to changing intellectual, economic, and geopolitical circumstances. Further expansion of the political franchise, a sense of self-satisfaction at having avoided the bloodshed of 1848 on the Continent, and the rising popularity of quasi-Darwinian descriptions of race all prompted further explorations of, and definitions of, a quintessential Englishness. This culminated in the “Teuto-mania” of the late nineteenth century, as historians such as Edward Freeman and William Stubbs popularized the idea of England's Anglo-Saxon or Germanic foundations, thus making 1066 less significant and putting paid to any notion that Englishness had its roots in France (90).

The image of the Teutonic English—self-reliant, disciplined, and manly—did prove attractive, but not overwhelmingly so. Few followed Freeman in naming their children Harold and Edgar—even Freeman himself drew the line at Godric or Aelfri —and Samuel Smiles was unable to convince many to explore their ancient roots by holidaying, as he had in 1871, in the bracing climate of the North Friesian Islands. In fact, as Mandler reminds us regularly, there was not in the nineteenth century even a consensus that such a distinctive English sensibility existed at all. Dating back to Burke, there had existed another, “less particularistic” view, one that saw not English exceptionalism but, rather, an England progressing toward universal “civilizational” goals, albeit often leading from the front (29). In this view, people did not advance “according to their nature but according to how far they adhere[d] to a proper understanding of moral law” (32). The rise of a consciously imperial state after the 1870s, one that soon found itself less enamored of all things Teutonic, further complicated ideas of a singular Englishness. Mandler manages to convey the fragmented atmosphere of this time, and the variety of the views that emerged, in a way that reinforces his larger argument about the contested nature of national character. Irish claims to nationhood, efforts to create a “British” or imperial popular identity, even eugenicists’ claims for the genetic management of national populations—all worked to challenge the idea of national character itself, not to mention belief in a uniquely English sensibility. This “deeply muddled” debate, however, resolved itself, and in dramatic fashion, during the World Wars, producing “the heyday of the idea of the English national character” (143).

The experience of the years 1914–45, including wartime encounters between officers and the other ranks, economic flash points like the General Strike, and, most important, the need to provide a sense of national commitment so as to survive in the age of “total war,” together produced a reinvigorated debate over the nature of Englishness and an atmosphere wherein ordinary people “were constantly bombarded with intimate descriptions of what they themselves were like” (193). This was, however, no longer a character defined as ruggedly self-reliant or proactive; it was instead associated with the avuncular country squire promoted by Stanley Baldwin's National Conservatism; with Sidney Strube's “Little Man,” who muddled through; and, most famously, with George Orwell's nation of pigeon fanciers and tea drinkers. These characters (or caricatures), all linked by an implied affection for harmony, privacy, and decency, resonated during the war but have not since.

In his concluding chapter, Mandler observes that since 1945 there has been a consistent lament from the political and chattering classes that the English (or the British) have lost their sense of themselves, accompanied by the expressed hope that this might still be corrected. These efforts have ranged from Margaret Thatcher's evocation of “Victorian” virtues through Bill Bryson's embrace of a stoic people and—though Mandler does not mention this—the quadrennial reassurances that a gritty and committed English World Cup side has not entirely abandoned itself to Continental or South American “flair.” Mandler welcomes the reluctance of his fellow island-dwellers to have a character thrust upon them, perceptively noting that appeals to national character have really resonated only when they were of greatest use, politically as in the mid-nineteenth century, and nationally as in the World Wars. What, I wonder, does he make of Helen Mirren as “The Queen”?

The breadth of reading and the scholarly enthusiasm that inform this work make it an impressive piece of political, cultural, and intellectual history. Mandler has not covered every meditation on the English character (and how could anyone?), but in his careful delineation of the relationship between national character and a perceived national identity, and in his contextualization of the character debate as a modern phenomenon, he has certainly provided a framework and a vocabulary for much future work. He has assuredly reminded us that there may be nothing more English than thinking about Englishness.