ENGLISH IMAGINARIES
Six Studies in Anglo-British Modernity
Kevin Davey
What does it mean to be English in the modern world?
The answer doesn't usually include Nancy Cunard's assault on Anglo-British whiteness;
J.B. Priestley's democratic populism; Who guitarist Pete Townshend's modernist
rebellion; Vivienne Westwood's anti-fashion; David Dabydeen's blackening of the
literary and visual canon; or Mark Wallinger's detournement of English oil painting.
Kevin Davey, drawing on the work of Gramsci and Julia Kristeva, argues that any
analysis of Englishness should aknowledge these figures, and goes on to pose searching
questions about New Labour's vision of the nation.
With this book the debate about Englishness grows up. In his profound and engaging
meditation Kevin Davey puts to shame most of the recent spate of essays on this
fashionable theme.
Anthony Barnett
Kevin Davey's remarkable blend of history, criticism and politics, ranging across
literature, music, art, fashion, biography and cultural theory, is one of the most
stimulating contributions to that new questioning. It is certainly among the most
original. It deserves to be, and surely will be, one of the most influential.
Stephen Howe
An original and incisive analysis of the peculiarities of the English, offering a
variety of new perspectives on both the pasts and possible futures of
Anglo-Britishness.
David Morley
The shelves are currently overflowing with morbid and trivial pronouncements about
Englishness. Kevin Davey's book is a different cup of tea altogether. If we are to
move through this protracted crisis of national identity and towards a plausible,
plural and emphatically POST-colonial sense of what it means to belong to this nation,
then his creative and original insights will be indispensable.
Paul Gilroy
Kevin Davey is the Associate Editor of New Times. Closely involved with Signs of the
Times group, he has contributed essays to The MOderniser's Dilemma(Lawrence & Wishart
1998) and The Blair Agenda(Lawrence & Wishart 1996) He is a regular contributor to the
New Statesman, Tribune and New Times.
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