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England, Their England
Banished from his native Scotland by a curious clause in his father’s will, Donald Cameron moves to London and decides to conduct a study of the English people; a strange race who, he is told, have built an entire national identity around a reverence for team spirit and the memory of Lord Nelson . . .
What follows is one of the funniest social satires ever written. Whether Cameron is haplessly participating in a village cricket match, being shown around an exclusive golf course, or trying to watch a rugby match in the thick London fog, his affectionately bemused portrait of his new countrymen is a joy to read.
Reminiscent of the gentle wit of P. G. Wodehouse and Jerome K. Jerome, England, Their England offers a delightful portrait of Britain in the 1920s."
What follows is one of the funniest social satires ever written. Whether Cameron is haplessly participating in a village cricket match, being shown around an exclusive golf course, or trying to watch a rugby match in the thick London fog, his affectionately bemused portrait of his new countrymen is a joy to read.
Reminiscent of the gentle wit of P. G. Wodehouse and Jerome K. Jerome, England, Their England offers a delightful portrait of Britain in the 1920s."
Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1933
About the author
A.G. Macdonell
29 books8 followersArchibald Gordon Macdonell was a Scottish writer, journalist and broadcaster, whose most famous work is the gently satirical novel England, Their England (1933).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 87 reviews
February 12, 2015
Written in the 1930s, this is a Scotsman's idiosyncratic portrait of the English. Something of a roman a clef, the book includes veiled vignettes of public figures of the day against the typically English backdrops of the country house, the cricket match and the London pub. Whether one reads it as satire or 'takes it straight', the book is absolutely mesmerising - apart from the famous chapter depicting the cricket match which, all too true to life, is interminable. It is worth hunting down the Folio Society edition which is bound to look like a copy of Wisden.
May 19, 2009
This book is an absolutely pleasure when you want cheering up. It's humour is close to that of "Three men in a boat" which is saying something. The description of the village green cricket match is a classic - I can't read the scene without laughing till my ribs hurt.
August 14, 2016
I loved this little book. Written in the 1930s and terrifically old fashioned, it was beautifully worded and a joy to read. Ostensibly about a scotsman coming to London to observe the English in preparation for writing a book about them, it is actually a lovely selection of glimpses into a bygone lifestyle of ill prepared diplomats, country house weekends and sport in its various guises amongst other things. A fascinating rich use of language and hilarious characters with unlikely sounding names. If you fancy a little something different - this could be what you are looking for.
October 21, 2017
Gentle, tongue-in-cheek humour about England and Englishness from the perspective of a Scot back in the 1920s. Good fun and a book I was very pleased to get hold of. Thanks Nancy for being instrumental in bringing that about!
July 23, 2017
“Our fathers of old were robust, stout and strong,
And kept open house, with good cheer all day long,
Which made their plump tenants rejoice in this song –
Oh! The Roast Beef of Old England!”
The above extract from a popular song of the 18th century probably sums up A.G. Macdonell’s view of what would constitute Utopia. Billed as social satire, this book is more like an extended love letter to the idea of Olde England, although there are one or two chapters, notably the one on fox hunting, that I would count as actual satire.
The book popped up in my GR recommendations because I recently read “Three Men in a Boat” and this indeed has a very similar type of humour. If you thought “Three Men…” was hilarious then you will probably also find this funny. It didn’t really work for me. For much of the book I found the humour repetitive and at times quite tiresome. Be warned there are also some very dated attitudes and language around racial and sexual issues. There were a few chapters that brought on a smile, mostly in the second half of the book, but even at its best I found this no more than mildly amusing.
And kept open house, with good cheer all day long,
Which made their plump tenants rejoice in this song –
Oh! The Roast Beef of Old England!”
The above extract from a popular song of the 18th century probably sums up A.G. Macdonell’s view of what would constitute Utopia. Billed as social satire, this book is more like an extended love letter to the idea of Olde England, although there are one or two chapters, notably the one on fox hunting, that I would count as actual satire.
The book popped up in my GR recommendations because I recently read “Three Men in a Boat” and this indeed has a very similar type of humour. If you thought “Three Men…” was hilarious then you will probably also find this funny. It didn’t really work for me. For much of the book I found the humour repetitive and at times quite tiresome. Be warned there are also some very dated attitudes and language around racial and sexual issues. There were a few chapters that brought on a smile, mostly in the second half of the book, but even at its best I found this no more than mildly amusing.
March 18, 2018
3.5*
I put this on my to-be-read list sometime last year and promptly forgot about it, so when I came across it again, I wasn't quite sure why I was reading it, but what I found was a lovely, gentle, whimsical satire which is well worth a read.
I put this on my to-be-read list sometime last year and promptly forgot about it, so when I came across it again, I wasn't quite sure why I was reading it, but what I found was a lovely, gentle, whimsical satire which is well worth a read.
November 9, 2020
The concept of this book was so promising, but it didn't deliver at all. Donald Cameron, a Scotsman, is commissioned to write a book about how strange the English are, but he focuses primarily on how odd it is that they like cricket and scones. An opportunity wasted.
March 5, 2020
The very gentlest of satire - in fact it's really just a fawning, book-length love letter to the English. It's interesting as a time capsule of a period and place that no longer exists (and includes the racism and sexism from that time), but I didn't enjoy it as much as I expected. The first chapter (which is set in France in WW1) is excellent, genuine satire and I only wish it carried on in this vein. I do think the English would enjoy this more than I did, particularly those with a sense of pride and nostalgia for a lost Olde England.
September 20, 2018
Written as a novel from the point of view of a young Scotsman who is commissioned to write a book about the English after WW1, this is a charming and quaint reflection on the paradoxes inherent in the English character. Some of these are still apparent today.
The scenes include a country house weekend, a visit to the theatre, cricket and rugby matches, a voyage to Danzig, the village pub, political meetings ("... you don't need facts or tommy-rot of that sort..."), a theatre trip and a diplomatic conference in Geneva. Of these, I'm afraid I didn't find the cricket match nearly as funny as it's cracked up to be, but the comments on, for example, schools of novelists or the pretentiousness of modern theatre were much more amusing.
In parts, the book reminded me of H.V.Morton's "In Search of England" and there are some lovely, sumptuous sentences that run into pages. "At 7 o'clock the sky over Lambeth was all pigeon-blue and mother-of-pearl and jade-green and citron and topaz" - gorgeous.
Minus points: the book is of its time so not particularly enlightened or PC - to be avoided if you are easily upset. The ending seemed terribly abrupt, as if the author desperately wanted to finish somehow or another. Finally, the Kindle edition I had had all manner of typos and odd grammar in the intro, which nearly put me off reading the whole thing.
The scenes include a country house weekend, a visit to the theatre, cricket and rugby matches, a voyage to Danzig, the village pub, political meetings ("... you don't need facts or tommy-rot of that sort..."), a theatre trip and a diplomatic conference in Geneva. Of these, I'm afraid I didn't find the cricket match nearly as funny as it's cracked up to be, but the comments on, for example, schools of novelists or the pretentiousness of modern theatre were much more amusing.
In parts, the book reminded me of H.V.Morton's "In Search of England" and there are some lovely, sumptuous sentences that run into pages. "At 7 o'clock the sky over Lambeth was all pigeon-blue and mother-of-pearl and jade-green and citron and topaz" - gorgeous.
Minus points: the book is of its time so not particularly enlightened or PC - to be avoided if you are easily upset. The ending seemed terribly abrupt, as if the author desperately wanted to finish somehow or another. Finally, the Kindle edition I had had all manner of typos and odd grammar in the intro, which nearly put me off reading the whole thing.
November 7, 2020
A satirical novel from the 1930s that is still funny in places today, although the most famous chapter (the cricket one) inevitably went right over my head, as despite years upon years of reading British novels from this period I still do not understand the first thing about cricket. It has already faded a lot in the six weeks since I read it, but the one large thing I am taking away from it is an introduction to the work of J. C. Squire, whose 1920s satirical poetry I am now reading and loving.
April 12, 2025
AG Macdonell's gentle satire of English life between the two World Wars is a perfect quick read for an unseasonably warm English spring afternoon. It's not necessary to decode the portraits of long forgotten characters from the period. It's simply a bit of fun and should be enjoyed as such.
July 18, 2015
Cute wee story. Reminds me of the Jeeves stories.
Did Not Finish
July 29, 2017Nope. Dropping this. Not for me. Too much babbling and not enough story.
July 27, 2021
A fun, joyous book!
April 11, 2025
I came across this novel as a 1990s re-print with a quaint drawing on the cover of a village cricket match. I’d never heard of the novel nor its author. So I was surprised to discover that it was one of the most popular books of its time (reprinted virtually every month following first publication in 1933).
My second surprise was that, despite the cosy picture on the cover of my copy, the novel wasn’t quite the nostalgia-fest I’d been expecting.
The story opens with a satiric reminiscence of the trenches towards the end of the First World War. Even worse than the “maelstrom of noise and mud and death” (p14) was the callous indifference and stupidity of those in charge. Not a class divide (the novel sardonically records, for example, the stupendously suicidal bravery of a Tatler-reading Colonel who takes on 58 German machine gunners with his walking stick). The bitter divide lies between the men of all ranks on the frontline and the johnnies from High Command, snug and safe back at HQ.
But just as in RC Sherriff’s “Journey’s End” (written five years earlier, which I’ve only just recently reviewed) it’s the intense companionship that makes dug-out life just about bearable - the dark humour and appreciation of the sheer absurdity of life that binds chums in the face of the slaughter and destruction.
And so out of the grim gallows humour of the trenches comes the premise of the novel: a Welshman commissioning a Scotsman to carry out a study of the Englishman …
This study involves the bewildered former artillery officer, Donald Cameron, reluctantly finding himself launched on a tour of the English Ruling Classes, to experience and record first-hand their strange characteristics and rituals.
Donald’s tour of posh England leads to a series of satirical and sometimes downright bizarre incidents including:
- The preparation for his first Country House weekend, involving 12 second-hand suitcases filled with stage props and rubbish that convinces fellow guests he’s a millionaire magnate.
- Being interviewed by a series of seriously eccentric Fleet Street editors including one whose “giant skull, dwarfing as it did the four-foot body, was itself dwarfed by a chin that was shaped […] like the front end of a torpedo boat photographed in a dry dock, like an instrument for bashing in the gates of medieval cities.” (p31/32)
- Lady Ormerode’s weekend house party with its ill-matched and idiosyncratic selection of the Great and Good from the Stage, Fleet Street, Westminster and the City.
- A rugby match at Twickenham played in the fog so that no one can keep track of the score.
- Going to the theatre to see a pretentious play involving “a powerful bit of the most modern sort of Symbolism in which a salt-digger’s mistress was confronted with a lot of the Thoughts which she would have thought if she had been, instead, a champion tricyclist.” (p178)
- The garrulous, bilingual engineer from Leeds with his ingenious machine “for pumping out a five-thousand-gallon sewer in eighty-five seconds, all by steam vacuum.” (p206)
- Politicians winning over voters with crowd-pleasing blandishments and (familiar sounding) empty promises: “Sir Henry rose, thanked the gentleman who had asked the question, and congratulated him, and stated that policy was to get the maximum number of houses built at the minimum cost in the shortest possible time.” (p198)
- An encounter with “grisly” Patience Ormerode who “was in no way disconcerted when, half-way through dinner, she deduced from a gleam of pale pink above her stocking that she had forgotten to put on any knickers.” (p82)
Donald’s study involves many mordantly humorous observations of English Ruling Class types whose foibles a century ago seem barely to have changed over the years:
- Saving the world rather than sorting out problems nearer home: “If an earthquake devastates North Borneo, they dash off […] to hand over money for earthquake-relief, but do you think they’ll lift a finger to abolish their own slums?” (p11)
- Doing as I say, not as I do, like the editor of the newspaper with “leanings towards a mild form of intellectual Socialism” who “despised money and made very lethargic and intermittent efforts to acquire any, nevertheless was heartily fond of many of the things which money can buy.” (p28)
- The privileged and well-connected wangling top jobs on international secretariats and commissions, like Mr Carteret-Pendragon, Mr Carshalton-Stanbury and Mr Woldingham-Uffington, “all three wearing Old Etonian ties.” (p156)
- Out of touch head-office types, like the opinionated Major-General who “had even, once or twice, visited front-line trenches, or at any rate got as far as battalion headquarters.” (p83)
- Grovelling to celebrities like the self-made tycoon who had “made an enormous fortune by a most ingenious dodge” and “was of course knighted for his public services” before being exposed for fraud and “shot himself to avoid an absolutely certain fourteen years.” (p129)
- Keeping up with the latest novels, however vacuous: “The new fashion was more shadowy and elusive and emasculate, like faded ladies or very modern poets.” (p184)
- Pandering to the superficial and the phoney, like the golf pro who adopts an infeasibly thick Scottish accent because “it’s good for trade. They like a Scot to be real Scottish. They think it makes a man what they call ‘a character.’ God knows why, but there it is. It makes the profits something extraordinary.” (p133)
- Virtue-signalling support for disarmament and appeasement in the face of bullying and aggression by clearly hostile and dangerous states.
In contrast to the Armageddon of the trenches in the opening pages, there are also passages of poignant lyricism:
- “The cricket field itself was a mass of daisies and buttercups and dandelions, tall grasses and purple vetches and thistle-down, and great clumps of dark-red sorrel, except, of course, for the oblong patch in the centre - mown, rolled, watered - a smooth, shining emerald of grass, the Pride of Fordenden, the Wicket.” (p101)
- The railway line out of Marylebone “runs through lovely, magical rural England. It goes to way-side halts where the only passengers are milk-churns. It visits lonely platforms where the only tickets are bought by geese and ducks. It stops in the middle of buttercup meadows to pick up eggs and flowers. It glides past the great pile of willow branches that are maturing to make England’s cricket-bats. It is a dreamer among railways, a poet, kindly and absurd and lovely.” (p221)
- “A magpie flapped lazily across the meadows. The parson shook hands with the squire. Doves cooed. The haze flickered. The world stood still.” (p103)
- Donald’s vision on the hillside outside Winchester, reimagining his dead war pals as medieval warriors transformed into poets - before vanishing away, leaving only “the muted voices of grazing sheep, and the merry click of bat upon ball, and the peaceful green fields of England, and the water-meads, and the bells of the Cathedral.” (p299)
This world of timeless, pastoral beauty seems curiously at odds with the darkness hinted at in the chapter set in peacekeeping Geneva, where inept diplomats turn a blind eye to the reality of aggressive tyrant states already scaling up armaments in defiance of grandly-named disarmament committees.
Indeed, with the easy benefit of hindsight its’s intriguing, and saddening, to see “England their England” in the wider context of disturbing world affairs. Just a few weeks before the novel was published, Hitler had been appointed Chancellor of Germany with an agenda, and consequences, that would transform forever the world that Macdonell captures here with his random, rambling mix of satire and affection.
Perhaps the last word on life, death and other metaphysical matters should go to Old Mr Darley (“ninety-eight come Martinmas”) down at the “Crooked Billet”: “I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness, glad of other men’s good, content with my own harm; and the greatest of my pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck. War! What good is war to us?”
My second surprise was that, despite the cosy picture on the cover of my copy, the novel wasn’t quite the nostalgia-fest I’d been expecting.
The story opens with a satiric reminiscence of the trenches towards the end of the First World War. Even worse than the “maelstrom of noise and mud and death” (p14) was the callous indifference and stupidity of those in charge. Not a class divide (the novel sardonically records, for example, the stupendously suicidal bravery of a Tatler-reading Colonel who takes on 58 German machine gunners with his walking stick). The bitter divide lies between the men of all ranks on the frontline and the johnnies from High Command, snug and safe back at HQ.
But just as in RC Sherriff’s “Journey’s End” (written five years earlier, which I’ve only just recently reviewed) it’s the intense companionship that makes dug-out life just about bearable - the dark humour and appreciation of the sheer absurdity of life that binds chums in the face of the slaughter and destruction.
And so out of the grim gallows humour of the trenches comes the premise of the novel: a Welshman commissioning a Scotsman to carry out a study of the Englishman …
This study involves the bewildered former artillery officer, Donald Cameron, reluctantly finding himself launched on a tour of the English Ruling Classes, to experience and record first-hand their strange characteristics and rituals.
Donald’s tour of posh England leads to a series of satirical and sometimes downright bizarre incidents including:
- The preparation for his first Country House weekend, involving 12 second-hand suitcases filled with stage props and rubbish that convinces fellow guests he’s a millionaire magnate.
- Being interviewed by a series of seriously eccentric Fleet Street editors including one whose “giant skull, dwarfing as it did the four-foot body, was itself dwarfed by a chin that was shaped […] like the front end of a torpedo boat photographed in a dry dock, like an instrument for bashing in the gates of medieval cities.” (p31/32)
- Lady Ormerode’s weekend house party with its ill-matched and idiosyncratic selection of the Great and Good from the Stage, Fleet Street, Westminster and the City.
- A rugby match at Twickenham played in the fog so that no one can keep track of the score.
- Going to the theatre to see a pretentious play involving “a powerful bit of the most modern sort of Symbolism in which a salt-digger’s mistress was confronted with a lot of the Thoughts which she would have thought if she had been, instead, a champion tricyclist.” (p178)
- The garrulous, bilingual engineer from Leeds with his ingenious machine “for pumping out a five-thousand-gallon sewer in eighty-five seconds, all by steam vacuum.” (p206)
- Politicians winning over voters with crowd-pleasing blandishments and (familiar sounding) empty promises: “Sir Henry rose, thanked the gentleman who had asked the question, and congratulated him, and stated that policy was to get the maximum number of houses built at the minimum cost in the shortest possible time.” (p198)
- An encounter with “grisly” Patience Ormerode who “was in no way disconcerted when, half-way through dinner, she deduced from a gleam of pale pink above her stocking that she had forgotten to put on any knickers.” (p82)
Donald’s study involves many mordantly humorous observations of English Ruling Class types whose foibles a century ago seem barely to have changed over the years:
- Saving the world rather than sorting out problems nearer home: “If an earthquake devastates North Borneo, they dash off […] to hand over money for earthquake-relief, but do you think they’ll lift a finger to abolish their own slums?” (p11)
- Doing as I say, not as I do, like the editor of the newspaper with “leanings towards a mild form of intellectual Socialism” who “despised money and made very lethargic and intermittent efforts to acquire any, nevertheless was heartily fond of many of the things which money can buy.” (p28)
- The privileged and well-connected wangling top jobs on international secretariats and commissions, like Mr Carteret-Pendragon, Mr Carshalton-Stanbury and Mr Woldingham-Uffington, “all three wearing Old Etonian ties.” (p156)
- Out of touch head-office types, like the opinionated Major-General who “had even, once or twice, visited front-line trenches, or at any rate got as far as battalion headquarters.” (p83)
- Grovelling to celebrities like the self-made tycoon who had “made an enormous fortune by a most ingenious dodge” and “was of course knighted for his public services” before being exposed for fraud and “shot himself to avoid an absolutely certain fourteen years.” (p129)
- Keeping up with the latest novels, however vacuous: “The new fashion was more shadowy and elusive and emasculate, like faded ladies or very modern poets.” (p184)
- Pandering to the superficial and the phoney, like the golf pro who adopts an infeasibly thick Scottish accent because “it’s good for trade. They like a Scot to be real Scottish. They think it makes a man what they call ‘a character.’ God knows why, but there it is. It makes the profits something extraordinary.” (p133)
- Virtue-signalling support for disarmament and appeasement in the face of bullying and aggression by clearly hostile and dangerous states.
In contrast to the Armageddon of the trenches in the opening pages, there are also passages of poignant lyricism:
- “The cricket field itself was a mass of daisies and buttercups and dandelions, tall grasses and purple vetches and thistle-down, and great clumps of dark-red sorrel, except, of course, for the oblong patch in the centre - mown, rolled, watered - a smooth, shining emerald of grass, the Pride of Fordenden, the Wicket.” (p101)
- The railway line out of Marylebone “runs through lovely, magical rural England. It goes to way-side halts where the only passengers are milk-churns. It visits lonely platforms where the only tickets are bought by geese and ducks. It stops in the middle of buttercup meadows to pick up eggs and flowers. It glides past the great pile of willow branches that are maturing to make England’s cricket-bats. It is a dreamer among railways, a poet, kindly and absurd and lovely.” (p221)
- “A magpie flapped lazily across the meadows. The parson shook hands with the squire. Doves cooed. The haze flickered. The world stood still.” (p103)
- Donald’s vision on the hillside outside Winchester, reimagining his dead war pals as medieval warriors transformed into poets - before vanishing away, leaving only “the muted voices of grazing sheep, and the merry click of bat upon ball, and the peaceful green fields of England, and the water-meads, and the bells of the Cathedral.” (p299)
This world of timeless, pastoral beauty seems curiously at odds with the darkness hinted at in the chapter set in peacekeeping Geneva, where inept diplomats turn a blind eye to the reality of aggressive tyrant states already scaling up armaments in defiance of grandly-named disarmament committees.
Indeed, with the easy benefit of hindsight its’s intriguing, and saddening, to see “England their England” in the wider context of disturbing world affairs. Just a few weeks before the novel was published, Hitler had been appointed Chancellor of Germany with an agenda, and consequences, that would transform forever the world that Macdonell captures here with his random, rambling mix of satire and affection.
Perhaps the last word on life, death and other metaphysical matters should go to Old Mr Darley (“ninety-eight come Martinmas”) down at the “Crooked Billet”: “I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness, glad of other men’s good, content with my own harm; and the greatest of my pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck. War! What good is war to us?”
February 22, 2026
I expected too much from this book
: Based on prior reviews it is now obvious to me that I expected too much from this book. It was recommended as a book about ‘cricket’ and “a funny” cricket book. It is NOT a cricket book, except one chapter about a game of cricket between a team of “upper class” men and a team from a village (rural).
Some readers and reviewers suggest the account of the cricket game is funny. It really is not, just a set of wildly exaggerated conditions and events. While I have no experience in the 1930s I played a lot of cricket in the 1970s-1980s for a variety of teams in different geographic, and club/social class settings (villages grounds up to Test grounds). Hardly any of this related to my experience and I’ve seen (and heard of) odd, crazy and funny things before, during, and after cricket matches. Yes, the cricket match description and the rest of the book says a lot about the flawed English (British) class system and the portrayal of arrogance and aloofness in equal measure but to me what is described is a rather sad “England” and not particularly funny one.
To be clear, I liked the initial premise and the opening chapters of the book but the story/mission went off track and rambled aimlessly around a series of mostly observing the English playing sports or in scenarios where the extremes of the English elite are easy targets. Yes, it is satirical and yes much better than I could write but for me this satirical novel tries too hard and falls flat. For its time I am sure this was a fun read.
: Based on prior reviews it is now obvious to me that I expected too much from this book. It was recommended as a book about ‘cricket’ and “a funny” cricket book. It is NOT a cricket book, except one chapter about a game of cricket between a team of “upper class” men and a team from a village (rural).
Some readers and reviewers suggest the account of the cricket game is funny. It really is not, just a set of wildly exaggerated conditions and events. While I have no experience in the 1930s I played a lot of cricket in the 1970s-1980s for a variety of teams in different geographic, and club/social class settings (villages grounds up to Test grounds). Hardly any of this related to my experience and I’ve seen (and heard of) odd, crazy and funny things before, during, and after cricket matches. Yes, the cricket match description and the rest of the book says a lot about the flawed English (British) class system and the portrayal of arrogance and aloofness in equal measure but to me what is described is a rather sad “England” and not particularly funny one.
To be clear, I liked the initial premise and the opening chapters of the book but the story/mission went off track and rambled aimlessly around a series of mostly observing the English playing sports or in scenarios where the extremes of the English elite are easy targets. Yes, it is satirical and yes much better than I could write but for me this satirical novel tries too hard and falls flat. For its time I am sure this was a fun read.
November 16, 2020
"Banished from his native Scotland by a curious clause in his father’s will, Donald Cameron moves to London and decides to conduct a study of the English people; a strange race who, he is told, have built an entire national identity around a reverence for team spirit and the memory of Lord Nelson . . .
"What follows is one of the funniest social satires ever written. Whether Cameron is haplessly participating in a village cricket match, being shown around an exclusive golf course, or trying to watch a rugby match in the thick London fog, his affectionately bemused portrait of his new countrymen is a joy to read.
"Reminiscent of the gentle wit of P. G. Wodehouse and Jerome K. Jerome, England, Their England offers a delightful portrait of Britain in the 1920s."
I can see that this book is satire. The problem is: I'm not a native of Britain so most of the references went right over my head. Obviously it was first published in the 1930s, which makes the references even more esoteric. I'm sure it was spot on in its day, but unfortunately ...
"What follows is one of the funniest social satires ever written. Whether Cameron is haplessly participating in a village cricket match, being shown around an exclusive golf course, or trying to watch a rugby match in the thick London fog, his affectionately bemused portrait of his new countrymen is a joy to read.
"Reminiscent of the gentle wit of P. G. Wodehouse and Jerome K. Jerome, England, Their England offers a delightful portrait of Britain in the 1920s."
I can see that this book is satire. The problem is: I'm not a native of Britain so most of the references went right over my head. Obviously it was first published in the 1930s, which makes the references even more esoteric. I'm sure it was spot on in its day, but unfortunately ...
November 14, 2020
"But can you tell me sir, what national honour does for me? I've worked on the land all my life, and the least I've ever earned is four and six a week and the most is twenty nine shillings.. In 1914 a man comes down to the green here, and he makes a speech about just that very national honour that you've been talking about. Mind you, sir, in 1914 the nation and all its honour was giving me twenty two shillings a week and I was working seventy four hours a week for it. But I had to give three sons and eight grandsons to fight for the national honour. Eleven of them. And three were killed and two lost legs. And what good did that do to them or Mr Davis here or Mr Darley? Cost of living is higher. Beer is more expensive and so is tobacco. And my grandsons, the ones that weren't killed, can't get work. And all that for what you call national honour."
October 28, 2012
This book is simply wonderful. If you like P.G. Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, George MacDonald Fraser, you will like A.G. Macdonnell. A Scotsman's view of England in the interwar years, England, Their England is full of hilarious observations and satirical takes on just about every type of personality in society. Admittedly, as an American, I was not able fully to appreciate the humor of the cricket match, the book's most famous scene, because I don't understand the game. The only negatives are that the book isn't longer or it's author more prolific.
December 1, 2013
Moments of decent satire and occasionally - when he stops fannying around and dials down the panto silliness - a little lyrical. But very, very much 'of its time' (quite entertainingly racist at points), dated and just, well, tiresome. Like a not-as-clever 'Decline and Fall'.
I somehow came across it mentioned as a pointed Scottish 'take' on the English, but it's really an affectionate and unfalteringly loyal letter of love. Harmless, but nowt special.
I somehow came across it mentioned as a pointed Scottish 'take' on the English, but it's really an affectionate and unfalteringly loyal letter of love. Harmless, but nowt special.
August 23, 2024
An absolutely hilarious satirical novel of the 1920s, about a Scottish war veteran trying to define what makes the English tick. Definitely not to be taken seriously. There are very funny and sometimes quite scathing passages about cricket, fox-hunting, and other quintessentially English pastimes. The only reason I'm not giving five stars is because of the ending, which fizzles out in a sort of abstract philosophising.
April 12, 2014
Well, not a good book from, an English point of view. That is, a Sassanach point of view. OK - it pokes fun at the English from a Scottish point of view which ought to be edifying for those of us on this side of the pond. Anyone for cricket?? Macdonnell pokes fun at himself, too! A good, quick read, a pleasant read and very entertaining. Well enjoyed.
Read
February 20, 2011I have the 1949 edition. Can't remember it. To re-read sometime.
Read
February 12, 2013It takes a special sort of genius to describe cricket ball going up in the air, then keep us riveted by sharp, fast narrative for three pages until it comes down again.
February 26, 2014
Amusing. A view from a Scot of the English after WWI. Funny at parts.
October 25, 2017
A hugely enjoyable read. What could be better? A brilliant cricket match; a hunting scene beautifully kebabbed; thatchers- a gently satirical look.at Englishness. Lovely half term reading.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 23, 2019
One of my favourite books of all time. I have bought many copies as gifts. If you want to understand satire and the British sense of humour, read this.
November 7, 2021
Genius at work
Quite amazing. I now know where Wodehouse and later Peter Ronnie wood came from . Why has it taken me so long to find this masterpiece? .
Quite amazing. I now know where Wodehouse and later Peter Ronnie wood came from . Why has it taken me so long to find this masterpiece? .
July 9, 2023
A warm and affectionate comedy. A Welsh publisher commissions Donald Cameron, a young Scot, who he met in a pillbox in Belgium during World War I, to write a book about the English from the point of view of an outsider. The Welshman's theory is that they are a nation of poets (which is what many people would say about the Welsh); Donald thinks, at least at one point, that they don't have a national character, "they're all different". But they are probably mad, and definitely (in many cases) kind, although he doesn't shy away from highlighting the exceptions. The fox-hunting chapter is particularly biting, and a masterpiece of "show, don't tell" applied to satire.
With many sparkling comic moments, this book somehow manages to combine brilliant satire with warmth, even sentimentality. It's well known for the description of the village cricket match, and deservedly so, but there are plenty of other wonderful chapters: the country-house stay where an eccentric English friend of the hero "helps" him by ringing up and pretending to be various important people leaving messages for him with people who'll be impressed that he knows those important people, leading to conversations which poor Donald finds either incomprehensible or deeply embarrassing; the hotel fire, in which the English partygoers trapped on the roof behave with complete calm under the command of the Major-General; the fox-hunting chapter already mentioned; the episode at the League of Nations, an organization the author worked for at one time, where the English delegate gives speeches that are so careful to say nothing that they get attached to the wrong issues and nobody notices. There are some marvelous characters, too: the English landowner who, after agreeing with his wife that they won't collect the full rent (or, in some cases, any rent) from tenants who are having a hard time of it, insists vehemently that he's a good businessman; the Yorkshire engineer who has been all over the world delivering machines and teaching the recipients to use them, sometimes for years at a time; the varied literary eccentrics; the secretly virtuous film star, true to the precepts of her father, the vicar; the noncommittal trio of young men who work at the League of Nations, and whose answer to any question is "yes and no"; the young man and woman, siblings, who have no topics of conversation and only one adjective at any given time (currently the adjective is "grim").
It closes with a sentimental chapter set at Winchester, where the author (but not his character) went to school, in which one of the boys (or "men," as they're known at Winchester; this particular man is about 12 years old) explains that a piece of terminology used at the school is based on something that used to happen "until quite recently," and when pressed clarifies that by this he means 70 or 80 years ago. Given that Winchester was founded in 1382, 70 or 80 years does count as recent in terms of its history. (I went to a school founded 5 years before I started there, so by the time I left I had witnessed half its history to that point, and the country I was born in was only founded in 1840, so it's hard to imagine what it would be like to go to a school with such a depth of history.) I was reminded of Wodehouse's Psmith in the City , where the viewpoint character visits Wodehouse's old school (which is not the character's old school).
I was left with the impression that Donald thinks that the English are kind largely because he is kind. A lot of the time, he has no idea what is going on, what his English acquaintances are talking about, or why they are doing what they're doing, but he struggles on as best he can.
If the book has a fault, it's that it's very much about its own time (which is also a strength, if you're interested in getting an insight into that time), and a lot of the contemporary references have lost their resonance in almost a century. But you can generally pick up from context what's being referenced, at least in general terms, and the Wikipedia feature on my Kindle was helpful in many cases too.
Genuinely witty in its observations and phrasing, with hilarious set-pieces and mostly affectionate portraits of a dozen varieties of eccentricity and oddness, this is a book for fans of Wodehouse and Jerome K. Jerome, or anyone who wants a comedic exploration of the England of the 1920s.
With many sparkling comic moments, this book somehow manages to combine brilliant satire with warmth, even sentimentality. It's well known for the description of the village cricket match, and deservedly so, but there are plenty of other wonderful chapters: the country-house stay where an eccentric English friend of the hero "helps" him by ringing up and pretending to be various important people leaving messages for him with people who'll be impressed that he knows those important people, leading to conversations which poor Donald finds either incomprehensible or deeply embarrassing; the hotel fire, in which the English partygoers trapped on the roof behave with complete calm under the command of the Major-General; the fox-hunting chapter already mentioned; the episode at the League of Nations, an organization the author worked for at one time, where the English delegate gives speeches that are so careful to say nothing that they get attached to the wrong issues and nobody notices. There are some marvelous characters, too: the English landowner who, after agreeing with his wife that they won't collect the full rent (or, in some cases, any rent) from tenants who are having a hard time of it, insists vehemently that he's a good businessman; the Yorkshire engineer who has been all over the world delivering machines and teaching the recipients to use them, sometimes for years at a time; the varied literary eccentrics; the secretly virtuous film star, true to the precepts of her father, the vicar; the noncommittal trio of young men who work at the League of Nations, and whose answer to any question is "yes and no"; the young man and woman, siblings, who have no topics of conversation and only one adjective at any given time (currently the adjective is "grim").
It closes with a sentimental chapter set at Winchester, where the author (but not his character) went to school, in which one of the boys (or "men," as they're known at Winchester; this particular man is about 12 years old) explains that a piece of terminology used at the school is based on something that used to happen "until quite recently," and when pressed clarifies that by this he means 70 or 80 years ago. Given that Winchester was founded in 1382, 70 or 80 years does count as recent in terms of its history. (I went to a school founded 5 years before I started there, so by the time I left I had witnessed half its history to that point, and the country I was born in was only founded in 1840, so it's hard to imagine what it would be like to go to a school with such a depth of history.) I was reminded of Wodehouse's Psmith in the City , where the viewpoint character visits Wodehouse's old school (which is not the character's old school).
I was left with the impression that Donald thinks that the English are kind largely because he is kind. A lot of the time, he has no idea what is going on, what his English acquaintances are talking about, or why they are doing what they're doing, but he struggles on as best he can.
If the book has a fault, it's that it's very much about its own time (which is also a strength, if you're interested in getting an insight into that time), and a lot of the contemporary references have lost their resonance in almost a century. But you can generally pick up from context what's being referenced, at least in general terms, and the Wikipedia feature on my Kindle was helpful in many cases too.
Genuinely witty in its observations and phrasing, with hilarious set-pieces and mostly affectionate portraits of a dozen varieties of eccentricity and oddness, this is a book for fans of Wodehouse and Jerome K. Jerome, or anyone who wants a comedic exploration of the England of the 1920s.
February 5, 2020
England, Their England by A. G. Donell is a novel classed as “social satire” set in 1920s England and written in 1933. I bought it having read a short positive critique of it by John Carey in his book The Reluctant Professor. The central character is Donald Cameron, a Scotsman, who has been invalided out of the army towards the end of WW1 and returned home to Scotland where his father “bans” him from living there and sends him to England. Once there he begins writing for a number of London newspapers before being commissioned to write a book by a Welshman. The book, he is told, is to be about the English, their social life and their related institutions, and written in such a way as to be enlightening for foreigners. By now you should be getting the idea....... that England, Their England is going to be farcical to say the least!
There are chapters that focus on a single aspect of English life including The Dinner Party, The Cricket Match, The Golf Club, Parliament, Theatre, The Hunt, The Pub for example.
“The cricket field itself was a mass of daisies and buttercups and dandelions, tall grasses and purple vetches and thistle-down, and great clumps of dark-red sorrel, except, of course, for the oblong patch in the centre—mown, rolled, watered—a smooth, shining emerald of grass, the Pride of Fordenden, the Wicket. The entire scene was perfect to the last detail.”
“All round the cricket field small parties of villagers were patiently waiting for the great match to begin—a match against gentlemen from London is an event in a village—and some of them looked as if they had been waiting for a good long time. But they were not impatient. Village folk are very seldom impatient.”
“At last the ball came down. To Mr. Hodge it seemed a long time before the invention of Sir Isaac Newton finally triumphed. And it was a striking testimony to the mathematical and ballistical skill of the professor that the ball landed with a sharp report upon the top of his head. Thence it leapt up into the air a foot or so, cannoned on to Boone's head, and then trickled slowly down the colossal expanse of the wicket-keeper's back, bouncing slightly as it reached the massive lower portions. It was only a foot from the ground when Mr. Shakespeare Pollock sprang into the vortex with a last ear-splitting howl of victory and grabbed it off the seat of the wicket-keeper's trousers. The match was a tie.”
The style of the book echoes other novels by Evelyn Waugh, P. G.Wodehouse and Jerome K Jerome. It describes England at a time when everyone knew their place in a class ridden society, one dressed for dinner parties and played bridge after port and cigars; when there was no political correctness to worry about and expressions like “old bean”, and “I say old chap” were commonplace, and doors were opened for ladies. It’s an easy read, no central plot, a bit like a series of short stories in each location or scenario but where the central theme is a Scotsman trying to understand what makes the English so ........ English!
There are chapters that focus on a single aspect of English life including The Dinner Party, The Cricket Match, The Golf Club, Parliament, Theatre, The Hunt, The Pub for example.
“The cricket field itself was a mass of daisies and buttercups and dandelions, tall grasses and purple vetches and thistle-down, and great clumps of dark-red sorrel, except, of course, for the oblong patch in the centre—mown, rolled, watered—a smooth, shining emerald of grass, the Pride of Fordenden, the Wicket. The entire scene was perfect to the last detail.”
“All round the cricket field small parties of villagers were patiently waiting for the great match to begin—a match against gentlemen from London is an event in a village—and some of them looked as if they had been waiting for a good long time. But they were not impatient. Village folk are very seldom impatient.”
“At last the ball came down. To Mr. Hodge it seemed a long time before the invention of Sir Isaac Newton finally triumphed. And it was a striking testimony to the mathematical and ballistical skill of the professor that the ball landed with a sharp report upon the top of his head. Thence it leapt up into the air a foot or so, cannoned on to Boone's head, and then trickled slowly down the colossal expanse of the wicket-keeper's back, bouncing slightly as it reached the massive lower portions. It was only a foot from the ground when Mr. Shakespeare Pollock sprang into the vortex with a last ear-splitting howl of victory and grabbed it off the seat of the wicket-keeper's trousers. The match was a tie.”
The style of the book echoes other novels by Evelyn Waugh, P. G.Wodehouse and Jerome K Jerome. It describes England at a time when everyone knew their place in a class ridden society, one dressed for dinner parties and played bridge after port and cigars; when there was no political correctness to worry about and expressions like “old bean”, and “I say old chap” were commonplace, and doors were opened for ladies. It’s an easy read, no central plot, a bit like a series of short stories in each location or scenario but where the central theme is a Scotsman trying to understand what makes the English so ........ English!
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