JoLIE 2:2 (2009)

WE ARE NO LONGER MEGA IN ENGLAND, ENGLAND

BY JULIAN BARNES
Laura Fernanda Bulger
University of Trs-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Portugal

Abstract
Long after the disintegration of the Empire, Britain faces religious and racial tensions
within her social fabric, exclusion being the main complaint from people whose colonial
heritage hardly embraces the concept of Englishness. Meanwhile, searching for the English
national character has become almost an obsession among the subjects of Elizabeth II. In
fiction, contemporary novelists, from Ackroyd to Byatt, have taken it upon themselves to
question old assumptions regarding Englishness, a quest pursued before them by authors
like T.S. Eliot and George Orwell, the latter much less enthusiastic over English identity
than the former, curiously, a non British born citizen. In his novel England, England
(1998), Julian Barnes joins the identity pursuit. His hilarious rendition of Old England, a
mega touristic project envisaged by Sir Jack, a vulgar unscrupulous entrepreneur, can be
regarded as a sharp criticism of what has been perceived, so far, as Englishness. In this
paper, we intend to show how, through language and parody - in its witty ridicule sense,
and also in its value-problematizing form (Hutcheon 1988: 94), Barnes questions cultural
and historical myths passed on to the present. At the end of the novel, symbols of
Englishness, such as the legendary Robin Hood, or the equally dubious Francis Drake, or
the pastoral settings recreated to crown the May Queen might as well be figments of a
national memory, as unreliable as the memory of the fading female protagonist, who no
longer believes that innocence can be reinvented.
Key words: Fiction; Englishness; Julian Barnes.

Private English gardens may no longer offer security and delight to the gentility.
Neither is todays London, under threat of home-grown terrorism, the ideal setting
for an aspiring young actor from the countryside who dreams of taking over the
English stage to become a symbol of Englishness. West End glare has often been
traded for diffuse spotlights of film and television studios and, if the actor makes it
to Hollywood, he or she will be rewarded with leading parts and an aura of
Englishness. It summons, if not the Bards mellifluous language, the unmistakable
inflections of the old upper-classes, or the working-classes mumble, or a pithy
utterance by a classless spy agent at Her Majestys service whose popularity has
surpassed the most celebrated English sleuth, Sherlock Holmes. Literature and
cinema, together with the televised serials of the classic Masterpiece Theatre, have
done their bit to produce a stereotyped Englishness, keeping it alive in the

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imagination of millions of viewers, now that the Commonwealth of Nations is a

faint reminder of a worldwide Empire where the sun never set.
But, the facsimile begins to look like a weary caricature that hardly
represents todays England, a postcolonial hybrid society where peerage is as
common as the commons. Therefore, the search for a national identity has made
Old England turn inward, and fall into a kind of nostalgic quest that may unravel its
origins way back to pre-medieval times. Glories as well as burdens of the past
are dug up to make sure that every trace of Englishness is retrieved, be it genetic,
mythical, historical or literary, from the indelible mark left on the land by the
Anglo-Saxon saga of Beowulf and the Celtic legend of King Arthur and his
knights; the Norman French aristocratic lineage; the tales by the father of The
Mother Tongue, Chaucer, whose spontaneity the Bard did not snub at all; to the
ancient folk-songs that bound the past to the present through patriotic scores played
during a London Prom (Ackroyd 2002: 440-47). Englands most distinguished
immigrant-writer, Joseph Conrad, a member of the great literary tradition, can also
be remembered as a model of integration, although the Homo duplex, as Conrad
called himself, might have denied it,1 unaware, at the time, that multiculturalism
would become a crucial strategy in postcolonial England.
Needless to say that exclusion and discrimination are recurrent complaints
from British-born citizens whose colonial heritage hardly embraces a notion as
slippery as Englishness, often associated to Britishness through an entanglement of
cultural and political relationships difficult to separate. However distinct, either
concept was used both in the imperial home and overseas to extend the power of
the metropolis as far as the colonial empire went, and Rule Britannia did go far and
long enough to have left, for better or worse, its enduring effects inside and outside
Britain. Neither Thatchers Big Bang nor New Labours Cool Britannia managed
to cure the so-called postcolonial or post-imperial melancholy (Baucom 1967:18489) despite the brief euphoria over the Falklands re-conquest, or the renewed pax
britannica, a set of political strategies meant to appease the different ethnic
communities living in the UK.
Nothing is left out in order to build up a national character, also in fear,
perhaps, that mingling with the European Union continental partners may wipe out
an identity made up of past successive migrations, compromised nowadays by the
recent postcolonial population.2 The membership in the European Union might
have heightened a national consciousness among British people, confronted, these
days, with a handful of directives from abroad. In addition, the nation has had to
compete with former rivals, like Germany and France, for a major role in the
1

Giles Foden, The moral agent in Guardian (Books) 1.12.2007.

Richard Bradford (2007) describes the new wave of emigration to Britain, during the late
1940s: The majority were either people of African descent from the West Indies or from the
indigenous populations of what had in the days of Empire been the Indian subcontinent and was, postIndependence, made up of India and Pakistan. Smaller numbers came from what had previously been
African and South East Asian colonies, and although these groups of individuals might have had little
else in common they were self-evidently different. They spoke differently and their physiognomy and
skin colour were resolutely non-European. (p.190)
2

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53

European chess game. For many a British Euroceptic, the idea of having Brussels
brought to London by the Eurostat must have appeared more like a continental
take-over than an open door to the rest of Europe, the myth of John of Gaunts
Island-Fortress (Richard II II, I, 4245), one of the earliest manifestations of
Englishness, readjusting itself along the centuries to any situation perceived as a
threat to British sovereignty and identity.
Although the Empire is long gone, Englishness is still tainted with
imperialism, says Dominic Head (2002: 119), who comments upon the effects of
its loss on the mood of a nation that has gone ever since from postcolonial
melancholia to oblivion. Fiction has also joined the tantalizing pursuit of a national
identity,3 discarding novelistic themes that were trendy once, like the pride and
prejudices of the upper-middle-classes, or the struggle of a post-industrialized
working-class against capitalist exploitation.
In England, England (1998),4 novelist Julian Barnes selects a variety of
Englands icons to parody the notion of Englishness. The satirical language and
humorous situations alternate with a self-conscious reflexive discourse in the first
chapter, when the narration renders Martha Cochranes childhood recollections,
and in the third and last chapters, when an aging Martha ponders her previous
experiences as Chief Executive Officer at Pitcos Group, the company owned by
Sir Jack Pitman. By then, the former CEO had moved back to Anglia, a preindustrial idyllic village where folks celebrated the May Fte and other delights of
the pastoral world. Nostalgia sets in as Martha, a repository of old memories,
muses over the fate of Old England, a nation that once contested the primacy of
the continent, but is now fatigued by its own history (EE: 251-53).5 Barness
neither idyllic nor dystopic novel (EE: 256), as the narrator puts it, might be read
as a kindly, quirkily patriotic view of Englishness (Bradford 2007, 183), rather
than a satire, were it not for England, England, the second and lengthier part of
the book, which turns out to be a spoof of Old Englands institutions and traditions.
In this paper, we will convey a few highlights in Barness construction of a
hilarious, though grotesque make-believe world, and of its creator, Sir Jack Pitman,
a character drawn out of a Monty-Python sketch. His dubious beginnings and
meteoric rise in the universe of high finance and peerage are objects of some
speculation. Reported both as a patriot at heart and a bit of a maverick (EE:
30), Sir Jacks reputation was worthy of the tribute carved on a Cornish slate on
display in his office, where he was described as a great innovator, ideas man, arts
patron, inner-city revitaliser (EE: 29). Sir Jack is also depicted as a shrewd,
ruthless entrepreneur, owing to his pragmatism, or, as in the text, to his roguish
buccaneering style (EE: 179) of doing business. In addition, he is known for his
lack of finesse and savoir in dealing with delicate matters, a view expressed by
3

Graham Swift, John Fowles, Peter Ackroyd and A. S. Byatt are a few of the authors who
problematize the idea of national identity by reconstructing the past in a type of fiction named by
Linda Hutcheon as historiographic metaficion (1988: 105-123).
4
England, England was short-listed for the Booker prize in 1998.
5
The quotations in the text refer to Barnes, J. (1998). England, England, London: Picador.

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Laura Fernanda BULGER

smooth talker Jerry Batson, his Consultant who, by contrast, is said to belong to
the crme de la few (EE: 35).
As Pitcos boss, Sir Jack behaves as a despot who humiliates his
employees, having his yes-men and women jump at the snap of his finger. Martha
Cochrane, who had Sir Jack spied on, only escaped being sacked by threatening to
divulge his double less than respectable life as a family man. Martha and her wimp
of a boy friend, Paul, one of Sir Jacks lackeys, had gathered compromising
information on their chiefs regular visits to Auntie Mays brothel, where he
enjoyed playing the part of a small boy and was nursed by his favourite
prostitute, while uttering wild baby cries like: Titty!, Goo-goo-goo!,
Naaaapy! Fear of scandal made Sir Jack surrender to Marthas blackmail. She
was offered a position as CEO at Pitcos where she would help him develop his
plan to turn England, England into Old England.
England, England, which is also the title of the novel, focuses on Sir
Jack Pitmans grandiose Project for an England theme-park, a quality-leisure resort
built on the Isle of Wight, where Sir Jack would become Governor for life, only
being succeeded, after his death, by his own replicas. The theme park would work
as an antidote to the real Old England, which had become a gloomy kingdom by
the third Millennium.6 Sir Jack was determined to recreate the thing itself (EE:
59) on the Isle, that is, a replica of good Old England, thus, replacing the original,
for which there was not much use any more.
To sound out the expectancies of the Isles potential clients, Sir Jack
ordered his Concept Developer to take a worldwide poll on the fifty top
characteristics of England and Englishness. The survey showed a variety of
landmarks, features and brand names, from Shakespeare to the Manchester United,
even activities such as gardening, and psychological peculiarities like hypocrisy
and emotional frigidity.7 As a whole, it provided a long list of stereotypes, largely
promoted by cinema, television and tourist flyers, pointing to a shallow view of
6

In Old England inefficiency, poverty and sin were on the rise, becoming an economic
and moral waste-pit (EE: 202). Jerry Batson, who is no patriot, defies Old Englands pride by
saying: This is the third millennium and your tits have dropped, baby. The days of sending a
gunboat, not to mention Johnny Redcoat, are long gone. We have the finest army in the world, goes
without saying, but nowadays we lease it for small wars approved by others. We are no longer mega.
Why do some people find that so hard to admit? (EE: 39).
7
The results of the survey pointed to Fifty Quintessences the order of which went as
follows: 1. Royal Family 2. Big Ben/House of Parliament 3. Manchester United Football Club 4.
Class System 5. Pubs 6. A Robin in the Snow 7. Robin Hood and His Merrie Men 8. Cricket 9. White
Cliffs of Dover 10. Imperialism 11. Union Jack 12. Snobbery 13. God Save the King/Queen 14. BBC
15. West End 16. Times Newspaper 17. Shakespeare 18. Thatched Cottage 19. Cup of
Tea/Devonshire Cream Tea 20. Stonehenge 21. Phlegm/Stiff Upper Lip 22. Shopping 23. Marmalade
24. Beefeaters/Tower of London 25. London Taxis 26. Bowler Hat 27. TV Classic Serials 28.
Oxford/Cambridge 29. Harrods 30. Double/Decker Buses/Red Buses 31. Hypocrisy 32. Gardening
33. Perfidy/Untrustworthiness 34. Half-Timbering 35. Homosexuality 36. Alice in Wonderland 37.
Winston Churchill 38. Marks & Spencer 39. Battle of Britain 40. Francis Drake 41. Trooping the
Colour 42. Whingeing 43. Queen Victoria 44. Breakfast 45. Beer/Warm Beer 46. Emotional Frigidity
47. Wembley Stadium 48. Flagellation/Public Schools 49. Not Washing/Bad Underwear 50. Magna
Carta (EE: 83-85).

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English culture and history. Imperialism, item number ten of the selected fifty
quintessences, suggested, though, some awareness of the period when
Englishness spilled over national boundaries to spread English civilization the
world over. However, Sir Jack ignored the rise and fall of the Empire and
concentrated on catchier, more lucrative concepts such as Robin Hoods Myth.
Features related to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were also discarded as if
a United Kingdom as such had ceased to exist in the Third Millennium. This
notwithstanding, the Project, which aimed at attracting thousands of gullible
Visitors to the theme-park, particularly North Americans looking for their family
roots, did become a huge business investment of top dollar and long yen (EE:
109), one of Sir Jacks pitmanisms, or colloquialisms, underlining, here, the big
tycoons greed.
The survey prompted Sir Jack to have his advisory Committee8 recreate a
version of Old England by building copies of sites and monuments, re-enacting
historical scenes, hiring low-cost labour understudies to pass for peasants, sailors,
shepherds, and members of the Battle of Britains squadron. After the death of
Elizabeth II, and against the advice of the Committee, who preferred replicas to the
originals, Sir Jack invited the authentic royal family to live on the Isle. At first, the
Royals made themselves hard to get but, short of money and prestige in their real
kingdom, they gave in to Sir Jacks pressure. They signed a contract with Pitcos,
thereby their being bound to counterfeit a majestic smile and wave from the
balcony of a half-sized replica of Buckingham Palace, known as Buck House, a
regal appearance that brought Their Majesties big cash.
Kingy-Thingy, the kings nickname, a half-wit lusty man who spent his
time chasing women, lived up to his Windsor genes by performing his royal duties
with panache. He showed his famous royal nervelessness during awkward
moments, put up with the Isles extravagant pageantry, learned the scripts handed
to him by writers, and was heard saying Damn fine show (EE: 166), as a kind of
grand finale. His Majesty, who pronounced Gowd, for God, and frinstance,
instead of for instance, kept an informal dialogue with his new subjects,
alternating slang words with a few obscenities. Kingy-Thingy and his wife, Queen
Denise, fitted well into Sir Jacks bogus kingdom, where vulgarity and kitsch
were common. The Royals became the countrys top cash crop (EE: 144), as Sir
Jack had estimated.
Actors were paid to impersonate major legendary figures, from Lord Byron
to Sir Francis Drake, and some female celebrities, like D. H. Lawrences
protagonist, Connie Chatterley, Lady Godiva and Nell Gwynn. A self-proclaimed
Protestant-whore, Nell had been the mistress of the Catholic Charles the Second;
she was regarded by the Committee as the heroine of a democratic story, an
eventual paradigm of the third millennium family values (EE: 99). The king,
who imitated his ancestors, fell for the girl who played Nell, a dark Mediterranean
beauty that resembled Bizets Carmen, the paragon of a loose woman. Asked by
8

The Committee consisted of several experts, among whom Dr. Max, a writer for the
Times, under the pseudonym Country Mouse, who became the Projects Official Historian.

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Laura Fernanda BULGER

the management to stop harassing the young woman, the King evoked his royal
status as a right to pursue his romantic pastime. However, Kingy-Thingy was
forced9 to leave the fake Nell alone and take a second-hand-copy, Lady Godiva 2,
as his new extra-marital amusement.
Robin Hood and his Merry men, number seven on the top essence list,
were popular symbols of Englishness given the sympathy inspired by the outlaw
Gang, who stole from the rich, and gave to the poor (EE: 146). Despite
suspicions that transvestism and other moral deviations might have been rampant
among the members of Robins Band,10 a story that could upset the more
puritanical Visitors, the Committee went ahead with the Hood Myth, which
became the biggest hit on the resort. People came from all over the world to queue
up by the Gangs Cave, and watch their archery skills and brawls. However, tired
of their diet of ox, the meal cooked by Friar Tuck for the benefit of the tourists, the
Outlaws began poaching in the nearby heritage parks where a variety of rare
animals kept disappearing. To stop the Gangs robbery Martha had them ambushed
by an army of stuntmen led by a private fitness trainer. Outsmarted by Hoods men,
though, the army intervention was a flop and Marthas career as CEO ended there.
Unaware of what was happening, the Visitors applauded Robin as he came out of
the Cave, thinking that it was one of his triumphs over the corrupt Sheriff of
Nottingham. The fake Robin Hood and his Band had taken their act quite seriously
becoming real thieves and making all sorts of demands to satisfy their wildest
appetites.11
A copy of scruffy Dr. Johnson also joined the cast of English
personalities. He was the intellectual resident, and host of the Dinner Experience, a
special programme for those keen on a taste of traditional English humour. But
soon the Visitors began complaining about Dr. Johnsons personal hygiene, bad
manners and asthmatic gasping. Even worse, he was accused of making racist
remarks about many of the Visitors countries of origin (EE: 208). More authentic
than he was expected to be, Dr. Johnsons replica had not lived up to the reputation
for which he was paid, and was fired, the job for an English humorist remaining
open. Given their respective eccentricities, wits like Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw,
9
The King backed down after Martha threatened him with a possible republican coup,
should he continue pestering the fake Nell: if the monarchy got too big for its boots, they could
always draft in Oliver Cromwell for a bit (EE: 189).
10
According to Dr. Max, Hood and his Gang might have belonged to a homosexual
community, their sexual orientation justifying their status as outlaws. The historian also
generalizes about the sexual habits involving the pastoral communities, where females were greatly
outnumbered by males: same-sex practices in a non-judgmental ethos are the historical norm. Such
activities would involve a measure of transvestism sometimes ritualized, sometimes, well, not. I
should also wish to record though would quite understand if the Committee declines to develop it as
a concept that pastoral communities of this make-up would certainly have indulged in bestiality
(EE: 150).
11
Ted Wagstaff, who acts as Marthas adviser, tells her that Robins major complaint was
not having a sexual partner: The present state of play is that Robins complaining that its unfair and
unjust and a crime against his manhood that he hasnt, if youll pardon my language but its his, he
hasnt had a shag in months (EE: 224).

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57

or even Noel Coward might be too much of a liability, if hired as hosts of a Dining
Experience.
Otherwise, England, England offered all the amenities and services money
could buy, from a ploughmans lunch on the top of the White Cliffs of Dover to
a high tea at Harrodss, the shop inside the Tower of London, where solicitous
Beefeaters pushed shopping trolleys for the clients. Unlike the stagnant economic
and social system in Old England, on the Isle there was no unemployment, no
prisons, no police, and socialized Health Care had been replaced by the American
model, which made everyone take out medical insurance.
The replica was indeed far better than the original,12 following the theory
preached by the academic Sir Jack had imported from France to lecture on the
post-post-modern make-believe world of the third Millennium, where, as in
England, England, nothing could be taken for real, the simulacrum having replaced
the authentic. Like an illusionist, the Frenchman drew doves from his sleeve and a
line of flags from his mouth (EE: 53), using the collective we to explain his
avant-garde theories: in the modern world we prefer the replica to the original
because it gives us the greater frisson (EE: 54). The explicit reference to the
French post-modern circuit of intellectuals and other luminaries,13 including
Baudrillard, the theorist of the reality effect in modern-day consumer society, is
one of Barnes many ironies.
As a novel, England, England, a world of shady characters, past and
present, who act under false pretences in their self-interest, is much more than a
parody of Englishness,14 the symmetrical structure of the book reinforcing some of
the main themes that run through its three chapters, like authenticity, imitation,
deceit and identity. In the first chapter, young Martha felt that she had been
deceived by her father, who abandoned her taking in his pocket some pieces of the
jig-saw puzzle she was building, which prevented his daughter from completing the
map of her England. Martha never recovered from her first deception, as if, not
only the pieces, but also part of her identity were also missing. In the third chapter,
12

Kathleen Su, an allegedly neutral writer who visited England, England at the expense of
the Wall Street Journal, raved on life in this brave new world: Here, in place of the traditional coldfish English welcome, you will find international-style friendliness. And what about the traditional
chilly weather? Thats still around. There is even a permanent winter zone, with robins hopping
through the snow, and the chance to join the age-old local game of throwing snowballs at the bobbys
helmet, and then running away while he slips over the ice. You can also don a war-time gas-mask and
experience the famous London pea-soup fog. And if it rains, it rains. But only outdoors (EE:184).
13
Pascal led to Saussure via Laurence Sterne; Rousseau to Baudrillard via Edgar Allan
Poe, the Marquis de Sade, Jerry Lewis, Dexter Gordon, Bernard Hinault and the early works of Anne
Sylvestre; Levy Strauss led to Lvy-Strauss (EE: 53).
14
Most critics agree on the complexity of Barness novel, a satire that ends like a moan over
the loss of a world no longer possible to recapture. Richard Bradford (2007), for instance, summarises
his view on the book by saying that: Barness novel involves a double bluff. He seems at first to
select easy targets for caricature and satirical execution: predominantly England as an assembly of
brand names and performances all capable of drawing cash from the credulous tourist. But by the
conclusion his characters have found among this chiaroscuro of impressions an England that is at once
imperfect but compelling (p.183).

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old Martha returns to her Hardyesque village, as much of a fake as Sir Jacks
England, England. As she walks away from the May Fte, she wonders if her
failing memory is deceiving her: Had there really been a gibbet up there? (EE:
261) asks Martha, in disbelief. Albion, like everything else in the novel, is the
upshot of self-deception.
In England, England, Julian Barness cynical account points to the
artificiality of a concept such as Englishness, a political and cultural construct
forging, as in the nineteenth-century, a national identity that ceased making sense
in a postcolonial time, when Englishness no longer works as a device to keep
Englands primacy in the world, or make history overseas, paraphrasing Mr.
Whisky Sisodia, Salmon Rushdies funny character, in The Satanic Verses: The
trouble with the Engenglish is that their hiss his history happened overseas, so they
dodo dont know what it means (Rushdie 1988:343). Barnes fine irony also
warns against the danger that any sentimental vibe, be it Englishness or any fluid
notion of the sort, may be utilized to deceive credulous, poorly informed people
who feed on stereotypes, myths, often fabricated tradition, the Visitors of the theme
park portraying the dupes. In effect, the danger is real, but only if mass reproduction and kitsch ever become as authentic as the thing itself in peoples eyes.
Lets hope it never comes to that.
References
Ackroyd, P. (2002). Albion, the origins of the English imagination. London: Vintage.
Barnes, J. (1998). England, England. London: Picador.
Baucom, I. (1967). Out of place, Englishness, empire, and the locations of identity.
Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Bradford, R. (2007). The novel now. Contemporary British fiction. Malden,
Oxford,Victoria: Blackwell Publishing.
Foden, G. (December 1, 2007). The moral agent, in The Guardian. Retreived February 2,
2008, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/dec/01/classics.josephconrad.
Head, D. (2002). The Cambridge introduction to modern British fiction, 1950-2000.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hutcheon, L. (1988). A poetics of postmodernism. History, theory, fiction. New York and
London: Routledge.
Parrinder, P. (2006). Nation & novel. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rennison, N. (2005). Contemporary British novelists. London, New York: Routledge.
Rushdie, S. (1988). The satanic verses. London: Viking.