Sir Arthur Bryant and National History in Twentieth-Century Britain is a significant new study of the work of the popular historian and journalist Sir Arthur Bryant (1899-1985). Since his death, scholarly interest in Bryant has focused on his Nazi sympathies in the late 1930s. Julia Stapleton broadens our understanding of the man and the writer. Stapleton illuminates Bryant's romantic ideal of his nation. She explores the historian's success in writing for a broad middlebrow audience, aided by his firsthand experience of two world wars; and she traces the decline of Bryant's authority beginning in the 1960s as the discipline of history diversified and new ties were forged between professional historians and popular readerships. Stapleton suggests that Bryant prefigured and sustained a form of nationalism that remained nascent within the British population (though not always its elites) deep into the twentieth century, as the Falklands episode and the recent resurgence of English national identity well illustrate. Twenty years after his death, when history has scaled new heights of popularity, a study of the historian whose work made perhaps the largest public impact in twentieth-century Britain could not be more timely.
Julia Stapleton is senior lecturer in politics at the University of Durham.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Early Life and the First World War Chapter 3 Oxford and the Making of a Middlebrow Figure Chapter 4 Patriotism, Pagentry, and Tory History Chapter 5 National Character, the Countryside, and the English Country House Chapter 6 The Life of Samuel Pepys and Liberal-Conservatism in the 1930s Chapter 7 The Offensive Against the Left in Interwar Britain Chapter 8 The Crown, Dictatorships, and Appeasement Chapter 9 Nazi Fellow-Traveling, 1939-1940 Chapter 10 History and Patriotism during the Second World War Chapter 11 Captive Audiences, New Alliances, and the Retreat from Conservatism in 1945 Chapter 12 Postwar Niche, the Armed Forces, and Political Disillusion Chapter 13 The History of England in the New Elizabethan Age Chapter 14 Friends, Critics, and the End of the Tory-Whig Road Chapter 15 Final Years: Political Commentator Chapter 16 Final Years: National Historian Chapter 17 Conclusion
