Christine Berberich (Derby, lecturer): ‘Fantastic. A four-part series about what it means to be English.’ That was my reaction when I first heard about Andrew Marr’s project on Radio 2. I thought that it was about time to have a study of Englishness on the radio – where it is possibly a bit more accessible than all the academic books that have been published on the subject in recent years. Three weeks into the series, though, and I am disappointed: the programmes, while clearly put together very well, have – so far – provided nothing new. Rather the opposite: they have just tapped into stereotypes and clichés.
But shouldn’t it really be the role of an established journalist like Marr to challenge and problematise those stereotypes? The English ‘vice’ of ‘self-deprecation’ featured largely in the first programme, and the term itself clearly has negative connotations. Replace it with, possibly, ‘modesty’ and you have an altogether different slant to the argument. Predictably (dare one say almost inevitably?), the link of self-deprecation to class was established and the claim was made that self-deprecation really is a manifestation of a feeling of innate (upper-class / English) superiority. This is certainly an easy link to make – considering that ‘class’ is another cliché used in connection with Englishness. It was all a bit predictable, really.
Since then, Marr’s programmes have established that there are some Englishmen (and –women) who are not self-deprecating, but like a bit of derring-do instead; that some like adventure and adrenaline rushes at the weekend, while living suburban, middle-class lives during the week. Miss Marple, Sir Walter Raleigh and Surtees’ fictional Mr. Jorrocks have been the examples; but are they really, well and truly, quintessentially English? Surely every nation has its spinsters-turned-amateur-sleuths; its intrepid explorers; and its weekend amateur sportsmen.
I was hoping that the programmes might break some new ground; that, instead of just rehashing the old stereotypes again, different issues might be looked at. A lot more, I believe, could have been done with Gabrielle Anand’s comment in the first programme that there are now two versions of Englishness, an old one that is about Marr’s so-called self-deprecation, and a new one that is more about a ‘look at me’ showiness (although this, surely, is not only an ‘English’ phenomenon). While this is not necessarily a praiseworthy development (surely the new cult of the Z-list celebrity is fatuous, to put it mildly) it nevertheless shows that ‘England’ is a nation undergoing constant change and is open to new developments, and that it is consequently not so steeped in the past as its critics constantly want to prove. Or, if not that, at least the programmes could point out the adaptability of the old ideals, the fact that they change to go with the times; the idea to link Mr. Jorrocks to Jeremy Clarkson was a step in the right direction – it should just have been spelt out a bit more.
One more programme to go… but the final programme will cover Dr. Johnson, the ‘stereotypically’ grumpy Englishman. About whom, one might add, there was nothing self-depreciating.
