Special: England’s divided soul – Nick Cohen talks to JAMES HAWES

The Bunker – News without the nonsense

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News, Government, Politics, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 24 January 2021

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What does Englishness even mean in a land so splintered by class, geography, language and even post-colonial neuroses that it barely understands itself? And how far back would you draw the North-South divide? To 1066? Or maybe to the Jurassic period? James Hawes, novelist and author of the riotously readable Shortest History Of England, talks to The Observer’s Nick Cohen about England’s murky past and murkier future in a new occasional series of one-to-one conversations. “The Norman Conquests were a long, grinding and demeaning process for the English. It was the slow annihilation of a culture.” “England hasn’t existed as a separate state since 1707… Instead you had a polyglot empire of different nations.” “When English people stand up and say ‘We’ve lost our Empire’, well you never had one in the first place, mate.” “We were able to beat the French because we’d created this extraordinary combination of aristocrats and businessmen that we call ‘gentlemen’.” “Even now, we automatically fall back into Northern gits and Southern bastards. This stuff runs deep.” “It’s been so long since the English have had to look at the problems of being English that I can’t see it ending peacefully.” Presented by Nick Cohen. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofrenijevic. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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0:11.8	Well college. I loved going to college. It's good you can retry. I'm enrolled on the day course. But college?
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0:55.3	look after theirs with dental life. Pick up dental life in the pet food aisle. Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of the bunker daily. My name is Nick Cohen. I write for the observer for all kinds of other newspapers. I do books. Our aim over, it's to an occasional series to help get through the sheer bloody tedium of lockdown by talking to contemporary authors
1:26.4	with books out who have something to say.
1:30.6	I'm delighted to say my guest is James Hors James you there I'm here Nick how are you I'm fine
1:36.1	Thanks good. I'm glad the technology is working that this is a major breakthrough. I wasn't even expecting me
1:42.0	I made it through to the bunker. Exactly.
1:43.0	James, if you don't know his work, well you really should.
1:46.0	He's written a series of cool crime thriller novels in the 1990s.
1:52.0	White Merck with Finn fins being my favorite. He wrote a very very
1:56.5	prophetic book which never got the attention it deserves called Speak for England
2:01.7	which predicted Farage, Brexit and the awful mess we are now in.
	...

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