- Paperback
- Publisher: Random House
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 096588662X
- ISBN-13: 978-0965886628
- Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 15 x 2.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 408 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,232,851 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||
Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Voltaire, says Ian Buruma, was the ultimate Anglophile: liberal, humorous, enlightened, and ultimately humane. In that respect, he's not unlike Buruma himself, whose delightful Anglomania weaves a compelling story, from Voltaire onward, of the ways in which European exiles and émigrés have fallen under the spell of the intangible mix of snobbery, liberalism, xenophobia, and tolerance which make up the English character.
Buruma's roll call of Anglophiles is impressive. Wonderful sections on Voltaire are followed by chapters on Goethe's Bardolatry, a marvelously vivid account of frustrated revolutionary exiles in Victorian London (including Marx and Mazzini), and Theodor Herzl's vision of a Jewish state based on his admiration of the English aristocracy. The book concludes with sketches of two of the most influential Anglophiles of 20th-century English culture: Nikolaus Pevsner and Isaiah Berlin. But Buruma never loses sight of the darker side of national belonging, interweaving his own complex family history into the narrative, as well as some subtle and perceptive accounts of the state of the nation as Buruma views it from the office of The Spectator and the Conservative Party Conference in post-Thatcherite Britain. A marvelous book about belonging and Englishness: witty, erudite, subtle, and above all humane. --Jerry Brotton, Amazon.co.uk --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
As the notion of European unity moves closer to becoming a reality, Britain still remains an intriguing question mark in the unification equation. Geographically isolated from the rest of the continent, it also remains a cultural and psychological island unto itself. In order to demonstrate Britain's unique position in modern European political, social, and economic thought and affairs, Buruma reaches back into history, examining the fixations and motivations of some of Europe's most devoted and unabashed Anglophiles. By reviewing "what Europeans particularly admired (or loathed) about Britain and how much, if anything, of these virtues (or vices) have survived," the author analyzes the feasibility of full English participation in the proposed European Union. A historically significant scrutiny of Anglophilia rife with compelling contemporary implications. Margaret Flanagan
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Splendid!,
By VA Book Lover "VA Book Lover" (Virginia) - See all my reviews I was thoroughly impressed by Buruma's ease in discussing the political ideologies of the 18th and 19th centuries. I was also particularly delighted to read the chapter that discusses the lives and work of Nikolaus Pevsner and F. A. Hayek, two favorite authors from my college days. Buruma is a lively and engaging writer who is sure to please anyone with the least bit of curiosity about the past and with a love of England and what it represents in its deepest and most profound senses.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Liberal Coconuts,
Like coconuts, Voltaire believed that English free institutions could and should be transplanted everywhere. This has special appeal to Americans who also hold strongly to this belief about their political institutions. Bunuma's book ranges to other Anglophiles up to Isaiah Berlin, taking in other figures like the soured -philes who turned into -phobes like Kaiser Wilhelm and Karl Marx. The book sparks like an intellectual firecracker - varied characters like Voltaire, Alexander Herzen, Nicklaus Pevsner, inhabit the pages. Overall the book will fascinate anybody who might even have just a minor interest in the history of ideas. The book is at his best when covering Bunuma's own experiences and those of his own family - his greandparents were German Jews who moved to England early in the 20th century. These were remarkable people - in the 1930s, they took in 12 Jewish refugee children, yet in 1945 at the first family Christmas after the war, they shared their Christmas meal with two German prisoners-of-war from the local camp. Sadly, examples of forebearance and humanity like this are all too scarce now in a world where violence and brutality seems to be daily celebrated in the mass media. Bunuma's anglophile love of English commonsense and pragmatism leads to fear for the future of English liberalism. In an acute observation, he recalls how the liberal Kingdom of Bavaria became the breeding ground of Nazism. His account of a Tory party conference and the perversion of old English values that went on, is scary. However, personally I feel his fears may not come to pass, since I write after the wipeout of the Tory party in the recent English election (2001). But anyone who has encountered a squad of English football fans on the rampage will know exactly where Bunuma is coming from. As an Irishman, I can relate to Bunuma since his juvenvile favourites of English public schoolboy adventures exactly mirror my own. While recognising English hypocrisy aboout class boundaries and its former exploitative Empire, I can see where British stubborness made the difference between liberty and those who sought to destroy it. For Britain to lose the great tradition of tolerance exemplified by Locke, Burke, Mill and Orwell would be an awful tragedy. Thanks to Bunuma, that may now be much less likely.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Albion - Profound and Pefidious,
Why can't the world be more like England? asked Voltaire in his "Philosophical Dictionary" of 1756. To him, Britain was the land of liberty, of the rule of law and of moderation in religion and politics. Kaiser Wilhelm II would have disagreed vehemently. Despite his pride in the Order of the Garter and his position as colonel-in-chief of a Highland regiment, the ruler of the Second Reich saw Britain in similar terms as Napoleon had done, as a nation of crass materialism, lacking elan and vitality, cynically manipulating world events to keep Europe and Germany divided and weak. In this wonderful book, Ian Buruma examines the wide range of responses to Britain among Europeans through the stories of his Anglomanes - both 'phobes and 'philes - as well as from the perspective of his own family. The result is a fascinating mixture of memoir, biography and history, filled with unforgettable characters including Alexander Herzen, Karl Marx, Garibaldi, Isaiah Berlin, and Buruma's own grandparents. Towards the end, the author raises uncomfortable questions about the current state of affairs in Britain. Was Isaiah Berlin indeed the "Last Englishman," and is the "fabled land of common sense, fairness and good manners" a thing of the past?
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Want to see more reviews on this item?
|
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
