| Chapter : | Introduction |
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more inclusive notion of ‘the people’” resulted, in which collective sacrifice and responsibility were valued over individual status and satisfaction.8 In order for people to feel invested in their country, though, it is necessary to form at least a semicohesive concept of what that country may or may not be. This is by no means free from controversy—and one of the most surprising elements of this process, as this study shows, is the scope that dissenters were able to find to express their views—but the concept was strong enough to bring the country together in the crucible of wartime and to suggest ways in which the wartime spirit could be tapped for peacetime reform.
The act of making an “English journey,” then, is much more than a personal process, and accounts of such journeys are valuable records of a nation and a people in a time of great change. As more and more people were encouraged either to journey into and around their homeland or to read of those who had done so, the view offered to them of their nation was rendered more complex. Furthermore, as members of its population were embarking on their own journeys, England itself could be seen as engaged in a journey from its prewar condition, with the attendant shortcomings that were increasingly apparent, through the upheavals of wartime towards a brighter, fairer, more secure future. It is a journey that is by no means over.9