English Journeys: National and Cultural Identity in 1930s and 19 ...

tastes. Finally, this study explores the career of J. B. Priestley, a hugely successful writer in the interwar period and an influential commentator during the Second World War, who disdained the middlebrow label that Virginia Woolf and her Bloomsbury coterie attached to him, preferring instead to be thought “broadbrow” in his tastes, as readily engaged by classical music as by the music hall.

In addition to examining the more literary works of the period, it is also highly rewarding to study other cultural products and assess whether debates being held amongst the nominally “higher” levels of the nation’s cultural life are replicated elsewhere. Indeed, a study of this nature soon reveals that talk of “high” and “low” culture is erroneous, for these debates are not being held separately at all but rather contemporaneously and with considerable overlap between what might be considered clearly demarcated and distinct fields of cultural exchange.

This may be seen clearly in the literature and art that sprang up around the emergent tourist industry of the interwar period—a result of increasing levels of car ownership and of access to hitherto remote areas of the country, combined with (for those lucky enough to enjoy a reasonably secure income) greater leisure time. This led to a burgeoning market for books that both celebrate the nation’s riches and offer practical suggestions for the potential traveller. Places of interest are set down, buildings of note are described, and in some works itineraries are provided so that readers, having followed to the end of the book, may set off on journeys of their own and experience firsthand what has been described. Even if emulation is not possible, it is hoped that the act of reading about such places will kindle a degree of informed interest, making the reader more aware of England’s riches: its history as seen in architecture and landscape.

The rhetoric of many of these travel books is surprisingly complex. Reading them, one often notices a strong sense of ownership pervading the text—not in an exclusive manner, but in a way suggesting that the riches of England belong to all. Much of the land may still be in private hands, but