Both America and Britain want a glorious Fourth of July
Two sets of books rich in nostalgia and empathy with the little guy and gal
Welcome to This Week, Those Books, your rundown on books new and old that resonate with the week’s big news story.
Would you rather listen? You can find our podcast above.
In our second year, a big thank you to our community of more than 10,000 subscribers in 114 countries.
Click here for a specially unlocked free-to-read post from the archives – it has the three brilliant books featured here last year for America’s July 4 birthday. Funny to think, but it was only the fourth edition of This Week, Those Books!
– Rashmee
The Big Story:
The UK has its first post-Brexit general election on July 4, which some Americans might think a bit unfair as they feel a special claim to the date.
July 4, the Glorious Fourth, is America’s 248th birthday. On that day in 1776, the Second Continental Congress unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence, announcing the colonies’ separation from Great Britain.1
But now, some in the UK are claiming this July 4 also signifies freedom for them – from 14 years of Conservative Party rule! (Opinion polls have suggested an election win for the main opposition Labour Party.)
Whatever happens, it’s unlikely any timeline of historical events will ever list July 4 as UK Independence Day!
But here’s something that’s common for both Britain and America this July 4: Nostalgia as a political force. The UK’s populist, right-wing Reform Party is run by Brexit firebrand Nigel Farage, who says a crackdown on immigrants will help bring back the good old days. And Donald Trump’s most famous slogan is: Make America great again. Farage, incidentally, is a Trump ally and admirer.
Away from the political right though, the story of a country, its culture and comestibles can make for a delightful read. So, here are two sets of books – from either side of the Atlantic – which convey a certain idea of Britain and America, as they once were.
This Week, Those Books:
Muggety pie and other treats from the grand old lady of English food and folklore.
Pulitzer Prize-winning historical fiction about how America was built.
Food in England: A Complete Guide to the Food that Makes us Who We Are
By: Dorothy Hartley
Publisher: McDonald
Year: 1954
The Land of England: English Country Customs Through the Ages
By: Dorothy Hartley
Publisher: MacDonald and Jane’s
Year: 1979
My rating: Engaging
Welsh food writer, photographer and illustrator Dorothy Hartley was born in the late 19th century. Travelling through Britain, she found and documented disappearing aspects of English life – recipes, customs and folklore – for her weekly newspaper column. Though Hartley wasn’t trained as a historian, her life’s work – covering six centuries of English history – testifies to her passion for chronicling everyday life in England before industrialisation and mechanisation changed everything beyond recognition.
Food in England rejoices in chestnut roasters, butter churns, pony-turned cider mills and apple scoops made out of sheep’s shank bone. It has recipes few will have heard of today, not least Hartshorn Flummery, Sloke Cakes and Rajah’s Sauce. The last betrays imperial Britain’s links with India, with Hartley writing that it comes from Reading, a town some 40 miles from London, where there “is a deep well through the chalk, sunk at great expense by an Indian rajah [or king] for his English friends”.
Hartley wrote about the little guy and gal. In The Land of England, she covers the monthly preoccupations and humble tasks of people who lived in the English countryside and worked in tandem with nature.
Choice quotes:
“English cooking is old-fashioned, because we like it that way”.
“Another impression is of monotony – but it is we who level out the year into monotony by demanding the same food all the year round! Mediaeval people pickled and potted and dried food to preserve it, but they did enjoy the enforced variety of the seasons!”
– Food in England
“ Outside work depended on the weather. During frost, dung from the stalled cattle would be carted to the fields, but when the ground was too sticky the heaps cluttered up the farm’s yard. Wood-cutting went on, and jobs such as clearing ditches…”
– The Land of England
The Awakening Land
By: Conrad Richter
Publisher: Alfred A Knopf
Year: 1966
My rating: A masterpiece
This is a trilogy of novels – The Trees, The Farm, The Town – which follows the Luckett family as they leave Pennsylvania for the virgin forests of Ohio some 20 years after the founding of the United States. They are a pioneer family in what was then called the Northwest Territory and gradually the Lucketts build a home and a community that would become the town of Americus, Ohio. Richter conveys images that have become part of the American myth – intrepid settlers, men searching for new frontiers, women holding the family together. The novels show the shift from subsistence hunting to an agricultural economy and then, urbanisation.
Interestingly, Richter, a man, tells the story mostly from the point of view of the eldest daughter, Sayward.
Choice quote:
“You could easily tell, she told herself harshly, that God Almighty was a man. He had favored man plenty when He made him up out of a fistful of dust and spittle. A man had no apron strings for things to get tied to. No, a man could gander around and have his pleasure and then wander off free as a hawk wherever he had a mind to. He could forget it by tomorrow and deny it a few months hence. But never could a woman deny it. She had to stay at home and take what came of it”.
– The Trees
“She noticed they didn’t say settlement any more. They said town. Already folks were talking of pulling stumps from the street and lanes to make it safer walking after nightfall. Now who would have reckoned, Sayward asked herself, that all the time this dark, choked-up river bank under the big butts and tangled vines here by the Moonshine Church was a townsite just waiting for its time in God’s almanack to come around”.
– The Fields
“The town lay like it always had there, with two streets already on the river bank and crossway streets at either end reaching out and closing her place in. Just to see it made her feel old for fair. Why, when she came here as a girl, all this was solid woods. Not a white folks cabin for miles east or west…Anywhere you turned, the trees stood so close and thick that Jary had to suck for breath”.
– The Town
The Backstory:
The politics of nostalgia in 21st century Britain and America draws a contrast between a virtuous past and a degenerate present. As essayist Marcel Proust said, “The only paradise is paradise lost”.
Research2 has shown that the political right’s nostalgia is based on longing for a time when communities were said to be more cohesive and respectful of traditions. This narrative portrays immigration as the root cause of the community’s loss of cohesion and therefore, its current problems.
I hope you find This Week, Those Books useful, thoughtful, and…a conversation starter. It’s a small operation here at TWTB, and support from readers like you helps keep this news literacy project going.
Email thisweekthosebooks@substack.com to say ‘hi’. Or connect with me on: Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Threads
Ready for another read? Get smarter, faster about America’s 247th birthday
Longing for the “good old days” of our country: National nostalgia as a new master-frame of populist radical right parties, by Anouk Smeekes, Tim Wildschut, Constantine Sedikides. Journal of Theoretical Social Psychology, 2021