Jon Bright (London, OK): CIVITAS has republished the 1905 edition of Our Island Story, a narrative history of Britain by Henrietta Marshall, which they hope might inspire "a return to a way of teaching history that has been out of fashion amongst educationalists for a while...that one thing grows out of another" (they have apparently sent thousands of copies to schools). John Lloyd picked up on this over at the FT, and links it to the ever present debate over what British identity should mean in the wake of 7/7. He follows Peter Oborne in rubbishing Gordon Brown's famous suggestion that it could be based on abstract values which might be held in other parts of the world - Lloyd instead calls for British history teaching to "stitch those values into a story that elicits loyalty".
James Forsyth over at the Spectator Coffee house (through which I found all of this) is challenging people to write the first line in this new narrative history of Britain (as Lloyd's original suggestion is a bit weak). "What made British History so exciting and satisfying was the way we went round whacking everybody else" comes the first reply.
Could we really write a loyalty inspiring history of Britain - one that will inspire loyalty in immigrants who quite probably already have an interpretation of bits of history such as 'Empire' which we might not be so proud of? Even if we could, would packaging it up and sending it off to schools be enough to solve our notional, national, identity crisis? As Michael Keith wrote here yesterday - "the Humpty Dumpty of the 19th century nation state cannot be put together again". Even if you don't agree with Brown, the need for a new identity, rather than one written in 1905, seems evident.
