Prologue
1. Once Upon a Time
2. The Treasures of Time
3. Living in the Past
4. In the Olden Days
5. Cruasades Against the Age
6. Nostalgia
7. Backing into the Future
Epilogue
Susan Owens is an art historian and curator who has worked at the Royal Collection and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Her previous books include Spirit of Place: Artists, Writers & the British Landscape (2020), Christina Rossetti: Poetry in Art (2018) and The Ghost: A Cultural History (2017).
'Susan Owens conjures our imagined past with such vivacity and
lyricism that I can see the dawn mist rising over fabled fields and
hear the tread of fictional histories on the worn stairs of
yesteryear. Packed full of myths, stories, poems and paintings I
found this book impossible to put down!' - Charlotte Mullins
'England has dreamed itself a past – with tenderness and wit, Susan
Owens shows how that dream sustains and deludes us' - Matthew
Sweet, author and broadcaster
'The nationalist nostalgia so evident in today’s discourse has deep
roots … The ideal past never existed, so it had to be constructed
from clues, whether they be Arthurian tales, or the objects studied
by the Society of Antiquaries (founded in 1586), Owens ties it
together through a strikingly broad frame of reference and an eye
for the telling object or episode' - New Statesman
'Fascinating' - Choice
'English identity has been steeped in an invented past, which keeps
on being reinvented. This lively study traces its journey from
Stonehenge to steampunk' - Apollo
'Via blitz spirit, Brexit and more than one coronation, Owens
charts the nostalgic myth-making mania to today' - World of
Interiors
'A fascinating study of the ways various generations of the English
have conceived of their nation’s history … The book ranges widely
to show an England that has always had more than a bit of the
mystical about it' - New Criterion
'Owens’s exploration of how the English have, for more than 1,000
years, conjured “Englishness” into being, then pondered the matter
of identity, is a useful antidote to the idea that the English are
too relaxed and confident in their nationhood to bother with
self-examination' - TLS
'An entertaining study of the seductive legends of England’s past …
bewitching' - The Art Newspaper
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