“Short and easy will be the task of the mere biographer. A life of usefulness, literature, and religion, was not by any means a life of event…to the little disappointments incidental to human life was never added, even for a moment, an abatement of good-will from any who knew her.”

No, this quote does not refer to the late Queen Elizabeth II—though several aspects of it, from the humble understatement to the positive rapport among her acquaintances, could just as well describe the late monarch (ignoring the lacking a “life of event” part) as they do its actual subject, Jane Austen.

Written by her brother Henry and included as a preface to the posthumous volume containing Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, the brief biography is one of the many resources found in the 2016 Norton Critical Edition (the fourth) of Pride and Prejudice, edited by Donald Gray of Indiana University and Mary A. Favret of Johns Hopkins. Besides confirming that one cannot understand Austen without understanding her, as he puts it, “thoroughly religious and devout” faith (another parallel between Austen and Her Royal Highness, and many others), the biography gives several details that lend insight into not only P&P but Austen’s other novels, as well.

This is, of course, the purpose of Norton Critical Editions, which I have used since my first essay as a California kid at Oxford (due on a Monday after meeting my tutor on Friday). The Norton Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, bought, read, and cited in a two-day scramble, saved my grade that weekend, and it still graces my bookshelf for whenever I or mine might need it.

While pieces contemporary with the books’ printings, like the above biography, letters from the author to family and friends, and subsequent reviews at the time (for P&P from Scott, C. Bronte,  Emerson, Twain, and others) provide a great context, as a student I found most useful the critical excerpts included in each edition, which attempt to give an up-to-date view on the literary conversation surrounding a certain work. For undergraduates who may not know where to look for sources on a certain author, I usually suggest Norton Criticals (and, by God, the several-page-long Selected Bibliography in the back—my brother and sister in Christ, THEY DO YOUR WORK FOR YOU), if only as a primer for larger critical discussion.

But the editions aren’t, and shouldn’t be, limited to the student; indeed, fans of Austen (or whom have you) might wear down their editions faster and more thoroughly than the student who buys it for a two-week paper. Although written with the academic in mind, works like Norton Critical Editions might very well contribute to the canon being preserved outside of the university, providing, as they do, the tools for a historical and critical understanding of one’s favorite work.

Literally one of the greatest novels ever written, and second in my mind only to The Brothers Karamazov, qua novel, Pride and Prejudice needs no encomium from me. Based on and in parts expanding my Goodreads review, what follows is a summary of and, at times, response to the recent critical sources in the 4th Norton Edition. I hope it will prove useful to Austen lovers as much as students.

D.A. Miller, “No One is Alone,” from Jane Austen; Or the Secret of Style (2003).

Discusses the break between Austen’s style and her characters, with the former being omniscient and the latter being little-knowing. Recounts how Austen’s style developed from reading 18th-century writers like Sam Johnson and how she novelized several aspects of their articles. Discusses the paradox of Elizabeth’s marrying Darcy (Miller cynically sees it as an unfortunate contradiction) by supposedly eschewing the very wit (or “impertinence”) that made her unique.

Jeff Nunokawa, “Speechless in Austen,” from Differences 16 (2005).

Discusses the timelessness in Austen (both narration and characters), whose writing seems to have no idea of the enormous cultural changes that were to come in the 1800s. Nunokawa identifies this confident changelessness as being part of why we read P&P, which, despite readers’ approaching it with nostalgia, has very little actual nostalgia within its pages. Discusses, like Elfenbein below, Austen’s use of space-as-social dynamic. Also contextualizes and discusses silence within P&P, and how Darcy must learn to open up because it is through sociability and inclusion, not mere rank, that one succeeds in P&P. Reasons that in Austen one can only know themselves through social interaction, and so Darcy’s attempting to only speak when he has something perfect or great to say ironically reduces him. Finally, examines the certainty of tone often used by both Austen’s narrator and her characters.

At times syntax/language felt a bit overwrought, but it may be because it’s an excerpt and, its being the first article I read after finishing the novel, I was still reading with Austen’s rhythm.

Andrew Elfenbein, “Austen’s Minimalism,” from The Cambridge Companion to Pride and Prejudice (2013).

Examines how and why Austen leaves out descriptive details; identifies her as not being a realist (as has been argued) because of this selectivity. Contextualizes Austen with Johnson’s 18th-century advice to make writing timeless by avoiding too many details; shows how Austen nuances this by using detail to enhance beauty of characters/scenes, like the then popular picturesque school (which suffuses the book – see Knox-Shaw below). Identifies rooms and the outdoors not as physical places but as identifiers of distance and a context for the social interactions that make up the book. One of the best articles in the edition, both for historical context and argument flow.

Peter Knox-Shaw, “Pride and Prejudice, A Politics of the Picturesque,” from Jane Austen and the Enlightenment (2004).

 Identifies the Picturesque as finding a medium between the Burkean-Romantic poles of pacifying Beauty and provoking Sublime. Follows the picturesque as a running metaphor through the book for Elizabeth and Darcy’s love, and thus, for Elizabeth’s breaking of gender stereotypes/politics. Argues that, like the picturesque, Elizabeth’s development depicts a nuancing of (if not campaign against) conventional beauty, while showing that beauty and attractiveness are not synonymous in the book (see Michie below). In conjunction with the other articles on the picturesque, Knox-Shaw’s was one of the more enlightening articles in the material.

Felicia Bonaparte, “Conjecturing Possibilities: Reading and Misreading Texts in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice,” from Studies in the Novel 37.2 (2005).

Places P&P within the contemporary philosophical debate between the rationalists and the empiricists. Establishes how P&P identifies Jane Austen as an empiricist in the line of David Hume due to its consistent focus on skepticism regarding secondhand accounts, texts, and assumptions. Stresses how often characters’ epistemology is discovered to be faulty, and how the book encourages a general skepticism regarding first impressions. Argues that the Bennet sisters each, in their own way, undermines one’s ability to interpret reality with certainty, and that Elizabeth’s developing a “practical empiricism” is “the bildung of the novel.” Goes further to argue that Austen was even an early Nietzschean post-modernist in how she incorporates her characters’ mutual and self-reflective interpretations into their construction of, rather than deduction of, reality. Probably my favorite of the edition’s essays, for its historical context and depth of substance, as well as readability.

Vivien Jones, “Feminisms,” from A Companion to Jane Austen (2012).

Argues that, despite her focus on primarily women characters and their circumstances, Austen should not be classed as an early feminist because of her reaffirmation of marriage, which Jones interprets as an endorsement of the patriarchal structure she sees throughout the book. Identifies Austen, rather, as a postfeminist author, who (she thinks mistakenly) argues in her characters and scenarios that the inequalities facing early-19th-century women had largely been dealt with and that many problems experienced by women could be surmounted not by societal revolution and polemic but by individual reflection and reformation. Identifies Elizabeth as being in the vein of Mary Wollstonecraft, but Austen as aligning more with the conservative female writer Hannah More. Accuses Austen of contextualizing the benefits achieved by Wollstonecraft within a conservative/Tory context of twenty years later that reaffirms the social structure. Reads P&P as conservative reinterpretation of previous feminist ideals through the onus for individual, rather than broader social, reform. In my opinion, Jones’s view that Elizabeth’s marriage is a renegging on her previous independence (rather than a full expression of it) misses the point of the book, which his her growth out of her own pride and prejudice (an impetus and growth Austen notably gives to Darcy, too).

Janet Todd, “Jane Austen’s Hero,” from The Cambridge Companion to Pride and Prejudice (2013).

Argues that Darcy’s place in society allows him to begin the book as a boor, whereas Elizabeth’s requires her to adapt through the book. Sees Elizabeth as having no individuality in either Darcy or Collins’s eyes. Follows Alistair Duckworth’s 1971 Marxist reading of the book’s property entail (arguably refuted below by Macpherson), applying it to gender and property. Like Jones above, interprets Elizabeth’s growth out of her pride and prejudice as a negative, a product of her social standing and gender, and thus misses the point of the book.

Elsie B. Michie, “Social Distinction in Jane Austen,” from The Vulgar Question of Money: Heiresses, Materialism, and the Novel of Manners from Jane Austen to Henry James (2011).

Interprets P&P as Austen’s attempt to find the proper relation to wealth. Reads book as a response to Hume and Smith’s writings on the problematic effects of wealth on English society. Elizabeth as the opposite of Miss Bingley and Lady Catherine, both of whom present the negative effects of status via inherited wealth (shallow, arrogant, etc). Examines the growth of manners to replace the traditional virtues of the landed aristocracy (both shown in said characters). Points out how Elizabeth’s manners, as well as her disregard for inherited virtue or status, make her attractive despite her lack of apparent beauty (see Knox-Shaw above). Looks at what Darcy’s growing attraction to her says about him. A good essay for understanding and contextualizing the different dynamics in the Elizabeth-Lady Catherine interactions, as well as the changing social mores of the time.

Sandra Macpherson, “Rent to Own: or, What’s Entailed in Pride and Prejudice,” from Representations 82 (2003).

Lays out the laws of property entail—and, Macpherson points out, ironic humor surrounding the issue—that undergird the plotof P&P. Debunks Duckworth’s Marxist view that the book’s society is structured along class and gender lines (see Todd, above). Showing how entail cannot be blamed on any one person or group, explains the implicit joke in both Mrs. Bennet’s expecting something to be done about the entail and Collins’s continual apology for it (both of which Austen’s readers would have seen as ridiculous). Reads Austen as not being against entail, per se, because it is an image of social obligation, not one of exclusion. Examines Austen’s contrasting renting vs owning as makers of different personalities and virtues (vis, Bingley and Darcy). One of the more enlightening, historically based, and easy/fun to read of the back material; possibly my favorite, contending with Bonaparte.

Andrew Maunder, “Making Heritage and History: The 1894 Illustrated Pride and Prejudice,” from Nineteenth-Century Studies 20 (2006).

Examines the role illustrations play in forming (and revising) later perceptions of an artist and their work. Explores how, “Illustrations play a central role in how readers construe novels,” and “modify, challenge, and even dictate readers’ understandings,” of the novels. Argues in a footnote that later illustrations of P&P like , rather than the text itself, are to be attributed with the reading that Darcy becomes more emotionally responsive by the novel’s end; conversely sees the text as validating Darcy’s cold “legal and ethical formalism,” and pushing Mr. Bingley to emulate it. Explores the effect the 1894 edition had on how the novel was interpreted, despite it’s being merely a “gift book” among many similars flooding the market. Presents and critiques key illustrations by artist Hugh Thompson and describes others, unpictured; interprets Thompson’s stated desire to show Austen’s “sense of fun,” as going too far, into reinterpretation. Although Thompson and editor George Allen caused a revival of interest in Austen, implies the popularity had more to do with the reinterpretive lens than with Austen’s work, itself (see my own critique of the recent Persuasion adaptation, linked above).

Tiffany Potter, “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,” from Women, Popular Culture, and the Eighteenth Century (2012).

Reads Seth Grahame-Smith’s book/reinterpretation, P&P&Zs, as more than a pulp piggyback off of Austen. Presents book as a concretization of the implicit, unspeakable aspects of P&P, with the zombies being “a literalization of the threat of a social death in spinsterhood…in opposition to the socially constructed life-and-death quality of the marriage plot.” Interprets several moments from Grahame-Smith’s book as helping readers better understand Austen, such as Lydia’s becoming an “unmentionable” zombie as an image of the unspeakability of her adultery in Austen, or the steady death to zombiehood of Charlotte as a picture of her intellectual death in marrying Collins. An interesting piece that treats P&P&Z seriously, though Potter ultimately interprets certain aspects of Austen (e.g. Jane and Elizabeth’s marriages) negatively, like others above.

---

Image Credit

---

A country is first and foremost its people.

Despite my best efforts I cannot remember where I came across that phrase, nor will I be so brazen to claim it as my own. Nonetheless, it has always struck me as being axiomatic, and current events in Eastern Europe have given me reason to reflect on it further.

The West, including our own country, has since the end of World War II (and in some circles even before then) eschewed notions of national identity and even the concept of the nation itself. Borders are seen by many as a physical expression of violent exclusion and “othering” of fellow human beings, who should be given immediate and untrammelled access to any society they wish; free at any point to up and leave for another.

Politicians, organisations and members of the public alike, particularly those on the Left, are quick to espouse the idea that migration and asylum are human rights, which sit above the rights and privileges that attach to existing citizens.

A cursory glance through the Guardian’s migration articles tells you everything you need to know about how the Left views borders and the right to self-determination in 99% of cases involving the West. They unceasingly extol the supposed virtues of multiculturalism and appear to truly believe in the idea of open borders, with scant regard to the existing people of a nation.

Yet on one matter, the notions of inviolable borders, the nation, its people and the right to self-determination have come flooding back into consciousness and are being defended vociferously by those who otherwise have spent the last 80 years denigrating them and holding in contempt those who seek to re-establish them as common sense norms.

What is it about the ensuing conflict between Russia and Ukraine that has stoked the fires of righteous indignation in defence of a nation presently undergoing a hostile invasion by another?

Surely the mounting death toll plays its part in this reaction. But I am not convinced that is all.

What we are witnessing, it seems to me, is on some level a tacit realisation and acknowledgement that there is after all such a thing as a nation state, a specified people attached to and belonging in that nation state, and the right of that people to remain distinct, separate, independent and free to maintain their own homeland. It is tacit, not because those who express dismay at the current situation do so silently, but because they do not openly admit the source of their opposition to Putin’s aggression.

Back in July 2021, President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin wrote an article, published on the Kremlin’s official website – On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians – in which he outlines the common bonds that ultimately make Russians, Ukrainians and indeed Belarusians one and the same people.

“Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are all descendants of Ancient Rus” he writes, “bound together by one language (which we now refer to as Old Russian), economic ties, the rule of the princes of the Rurik dynasty, and – after the baptism of Rus – the Orthodox faith…[which] still largely determines our affinity today.”

Of the constituent republics of the now defunct USSR, he says “Of course, inside the USSR, borders between republics were never seen as state borders; they were nominal within a single country.”

Mr Putin argues that “some part of a people in the process of its development…can become aware of itself as a separate nation” who should be treated “with respect.” He even goes as far as to suggest that those people should be welcome to establish a state of their own, but only after a satisfactory answer has been proffered to the question “But on what terms?”

It is clear that he does not truly believe the Ukrainians (or Belarusians for that matter) are as distinct from Russians as they like to believe. This he confirms later, essentially repealing his earlier platitudes, when he writes “But the fact is that the situation in Ukraine today is completely different because it involves a forced change of identity.” In other words, whilst some people undergo a change in identity and should be allowed to go their own way, this is not the case in Ukraine who have had such a change imposed upon them; a change it appears Mr Putin feels is incumbent upon him to help them resist.

Leaving aside the moral questions surrounding Mr Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine and whether he is justified in his view of the Ukrainians being fundamentally Russian, let us explore the principles he is applying.

What Putin is suggesting here is that the Russians and Ukrainians, though occupying separate, autonomous territories, comprise the same people, united by a common ancestry, language and heritage. In other words, the lineage of Ancient Rus endures, despite some fragmentation here and there along with the establishment of states independent from one another.

Such a set-up has historical precedent. The Ancient Greek City States were seen as being inhabited by fundamentally the same people – Greeks – yet each with their own independent territories, the citizens of which took on an identity derived therefrom whilst simultaneously maintaining their overarching Greek identity. One could be a Spartan and a Greek, or an Athenian and a Greek. Either way, one was still a Greek.

This shines light on something quite interesting in terms of the conception of a people. For, and I have long been aware of this, one’s citizenship merely denotes one’s rights and status within a state, not one’s membership of a people.

In other words, membership of a people, whilst it could be enshrined in law (and I think there are good arguments it should be – this appears to have been the impetus behind the idea of the nation state to being with, now weakened by lax immigration policy and the doctrine of multiculturalism), ultimately pre-exists that law and the citizenship that might formalise it. As Sir Roger Scruton wrote: “Nations emerged as forms of pre-political order that contain within themselves the principles that would legitimise sovereign government.”

This idea of pre-existence is quite clear in Putin’s understanding of the underlying indivisibility of Russians and Ukrainians. Yes, they occupy different states and maintain distinct citizenship. But, crucially, just like the Greeks, they share an overarching identity and membership otherwise not indicated by co-habitation of the same land.

No doubt millions of Ukrainians would reject this view point. Yet, in doing so, they too would be applying the same principle – namely that their being Ukrainian pre-exists the Ukrainian state. In fact they could reasonably argue, in contradistinction to Putin’s claims, that it is this very pre-existence which endows the Ukrainian state with its right to exist separately from Russia. Their very sense of themselves as a nation acts as the motivation behind their dogged defence of their national territory.

When it is said that a people have the right to self-determination, as many are now saying of the Ukrainians, which “people” do they mean? I think they can only reasonably point to a people who would in the absence of a state to call their own continue to be extant and identifiable.

If, for example, the state of Ukraine underwent a sea-change in its population such that the members of Ukrainian society, Ukrainian citizens, were largely Germans or Somalis or indeed a farrago of peoples of widely varying languages, cultures, customs, religions and historical descent/heritage, they would be Ukrainian in name only, solely by virtue of their citizenship. Assuming those who we presently know and recognise to be Ukrainian people occupy another region of the world, would they not continue to be Ukrainian notwithstanding that the territory of Ukraine would have been abandoned?

In fact it is quite obvious that Ukrainians are considered a people in their own right by the intention of the International Court of Justice to investigate claims of genocide as a result of the conflict.

According to Article II of the United Nations’ Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide is defined as specified acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”

I would submit that an awareness of a pre-existing membership of a particular and identifiable people has long been found in those of us who believe in nation states and borders. But I would also argue that that same awareness can be found in those on the Left who are denouncing the Russian invasion. For if Ukrainians are not a people in their own right, why should they have self-determination? If, as Putin holds, they are Russians, does it make sense to say that they are entitled to that determination? It would be tantamount to asserting that Russians are entitled to self-determination from Russians. Applying that logic, there should be no opposition to Surrey declaring a bona fide independence from the rest of England.

If those crying out in defence of Ukraine do not see a people that pre-exists its nation state, but rather a people identified only by the continued existence of that state, they nonetheless do acknowledge that Ukrainians are a distinct and separate people albeit merely by virtue of citizenship, irrespective of background.

Let us assume for a moment that is the correct view. This does not change the fact that Ukrainians, even by admission of the Left, have the right to decide for themselves their own future. Such a freedom must surely be unfettered, meaning that any and all decisions that could affect them within their borders should be within their exercise of control.

I think the notion of a people based on pre-existence to a state, though manifested and formalised by the creation of a state – a homeland – is the better one, without which the nation state is less well-grounded and defensible. Another reason is that if a people are identified by the existence of the state they occupy, what happens if that state ceases to exist?

None of this is to diminish the role that territory plays in the identity of a people. On the contrary, and as alluded to above, that role is of paramount importance.

The occupation of territory, together with the establishment of institutions endowed with a sense of identity and which reflect the culture of its people, is a direct manifestation of that pre-existing status that subsists in the absence of a law that enshrines and protects it.

Scruton put it thus: “National loyalty marginalises loyalties of family, tribe and faith… [placing] before the citizen’s eyes…a country…defined by a territory, and by the history, culture and law that have made that territory ours.” He goes on to say that “Nationality is composed of land, together with the narrative of its possession.”

As such, the nation state of a people – their homeland – becomes as much a part of their identity as their cultural practices. The loss of that homeland does not to my mind destroy them as a people but it is certainly a gross offence against their identity which serves to alienate them from themselves, even if not completely.

In this way, and as now brought to our attention in the most alarming of ways, borders matter. But more than that: the reaction to the invasion of Ukraine proves to us we already knew that, including those who ceaselessly advocate for the right of all and sundry to enter a Western country as if it were more their right to do so than our right to preserve our sense of who we are by exercising full control over our borders.

Russia might be invading Ukraine with tanks; the United Kingdom has been invaded by other means – unwanted mass immigration which has encouraged millions to arrive with their own cultures and sense of who they are in distinction to us who were already here and whose sense of ourselves is intimately bound up in our own homeland, its institutions and its history – now all under assault for being less than perfect and not reflective (rightly so) of peoples whose cultures and identities evolved thousands of miles from our shores.

It is time we recognised that if, as I would agree, Ukraine has a right to exist for the benefit of Ukrainians, detached from Russia and free to determine its own future, we in the West and in particular Great Britain, have that right also. We, too, are a people. Our state, our kingdom, might be the result of a unification of the English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish peoples, but each of us retains our own unique character and, importantly, homeland. Although there is some agitation to dissolve the union in Scotland (and in some parts of England), the preservation thereof derives from continuing mutual agreement without impinging on that uniqueness.

The same cannot be said for the results of mass immigration and multiculturalism which, whilst allowing newcomers to preserve their identities, serves to undermine ours whose is expressed in the country we have for a thousand years called home, but is now threatened with having to accommodate increasingly vast differences while losing the benefit of a retreat to somewhere recognisably ours such as was available to Englishmen and Scotsmen alike prior to 1945.

Any student of history can point to numerous examples of the inherent difficulties in establishing territorial dominion over multitudinous peoples who differ so widely in matters of culture and identity that open conflict eventually bursts out and engulfs the region. The situation as we face it in Great Britain, brought about by absurd notions of cultural relativity, is unsustainable.

The circumstances in which Ukraine now finds itself are objectively much more urgent and dire and, admittedly, have come about in a different manner: but the intended outcome is the same. Putin is, after all, making an attempt to reabsorb the Ukrainian people into a Greater Russian family, thereby extinguishing their identity. He will fail to do this absolutely, but if he succeeds in establishing dominion over the territory that otherwise acts as a significant expression of who they are, their identity will be materially reduced.

Such a loss would not necessarily mean a displacement of the Ukrainians to other lands, but the incursion of other peoples’ customs and laws, however similar Putin might hold Ukrainians and Russians to be. In this way, the expression of the Ukrainian people via a country and institutions that becomes less recognisable to them will serve to alienate them and prevent them from self-realisation and determination.

The Left knows this. They know that borders provide a delineation between “us” and “them” – this is of course why they hate borders. Yet in the case of Ukraine that same knowledge prompts them to defend, at least in word if not deed, the rights of the Ukrainian people to maintain a homeland for themselves.

If Putin does manage to subdue Ukraine in the immediate term, the longer term will be much more difficult. The Ukrainian people’s conception of themselves – a conception that pre-exists their own nation state – will likely prompt them to persevere in re-establishing it.

A country is first and foremost its people. But we in the West would do well to remember that if a people lose entitlement and independent jurisdiction over their homeland, whilst they might continue to endure in some form or other, their destiny will no longer be in their hands.

---

Photo Credit.

After spending a year across the pond in America, when I returned home to Britain, I was pleasantly surprised to find the streets of towns, cities, and villages decorated in union flags, with shop windows displaying various items in celebration of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.  Before I left, I used to ask myself why the British couldn’t be as patriotic as the Northern Irish unionists were who displayed their patriotism all year around. But while these decorations may only last for the jubilee, they illustrate something important about our country: Britain is still a proud nation.

Unlike most nations of the world, Britain (along with Denmark) are the only two countries that don’t have a yearly National Day.  Britain, of course, has days dedicated to the various patron saints that go largely uncelebrated, but the country does not have a day that brings national unity across the nation. Instead, our national celebrations only come once in a decade in the form of celebrating our monarchy.

The years Jubilee has been significant in signifying the proud attitudes that the British still hold for the union. This stands in contrast to the recent years of bombardment that have sought to teach the British to be ashamed of their history and heritage. This phenomenon can be linked to an anti-racism and anti-colonialist  narrative, that has appeared in recent events such as students at Oxford University taking down a portrait of Her Majesty due to the history of colonialism , statues of well-known and respected national heroes being vandalised during Black Lives Matter protests, and my own experience of being suspended from Aberdeen student’s union last year for the words “Rule Britannia.”

These attempts to erase British history and its achievements, comes from a narrative pushed by Marxist’s which seek to teach the British that our imperialist past ought to be seen as a source of guilt due to the dynamic of the coloniser/colonised to the oppressor/oppressed and the empires promotion of capitalism  through the industrial revolution. Some, such as Kehinde Andrews, even go as far as to compare Britain’s role in colonialism to that of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. But Britain never carried out atrocities like that of the Holocaust or the Rape of Nanking.  In a world of empire building, the British Empire arguably modernised countries and created infrastructure within them.  This thinking has served to not only attempt to abolish national pride but also the monarchy, arguing that its role serves to only reinforce privilege. 

But the role of Her Majesty is more than a ceremonial institution, it is unarguably a crucial part in shaping national unity. Without it, people are more easily subjected to the political polarisation inherent to republicanism. The monarchy allows for patriots from all beliefs to rally under one crown. It is why Her Majesty is the Commander of the army, after all. By technically holding the reigns of military power, Her Majesty ensures they don’t fall subject to political division. Thus, the institution of the monarchy allows us to connect with our ancestors precisely because our ancestors, like our countrymen alive today, are also different from us yet have fallen under the same crown.

This year’s Jubilee has served to emphasise these factors, demonstrating that the will of British people has yet to be conquered. With thousands across the nation being unafraid to display their patriotism and admiration to their country by decorating their homes in union colours and celebrating with their communities. I myself was in London this weekend witnessing thousands of people, including many from Commonwealth countries such as Canada, joyfully waving their union flags and singing along to the national anthem with others they may have otherwise never spoken to: an important reminder that our monarchy not only serves to unify us, but also our former colonies outside of Britain.

Britain’s glory and legacy can therefore still be conserved even in an age in which it may look as if people have become increasingly spiteful of it. The British have historically been a people proud of their nation, customs and traditions. With thousands joining together across the nation in celebration of the flag and Queen they hold so dear, illustrating that nothing has yet changed. This nation, after all, will always be the place where our hearts, ancestors and souls will forever lay.

---

Picture Credit