Introduction
In a lecture entitled ‘The English National Character’ historian Mandell Creighton argued that the English were the first to create for themselves a national character, standing aloof from the debates and upheavals of the Continent and muddling along in our own way. Over the years, this had made the English into one of the great nations of the world, but it had also made us insensitive and frankly very annoying.
IT requires an effort to see how exceptionally favourable has been the process of England’s development when compared with that of other countries. It does not bear the marks of centuries of oppression from barbarous conquerors, of long struggles to realise national unity, of eager waiting for some man with a strong arm and iron will who might carry out the inarticulate wishes of a suffering people, of passionate outbreaks of national despair, of chimeras of universal happiness madly pursued, of dreams of universal empire ending in exhaustion. As we look around us, we can see on all sides the abiding traces of these things on the characters of other peoples, traces of something fantastic, unreasonable, fanatical — call it what you will.
Précis
In a lecture delivered at Oxford in 1896, historian Mandell Creighton contrasted England’s relatively untroubled past with that of nations, where bewildering changes of border and swirling political extremes had been much more common, and had left a lasting impression on their national character. (44 / 60 words)
In a lecture delivered at Oxford in 1896, historian Mandell Creighton contrasted England’s relatively untroubled past with that of nations, where bewildering changes of border and swirling political extremes had been much more common, and had left a lasting impression on their national character.
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