The Enchanted Glass: Britain and Its Monarchy

by TomNairn (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2011

  $33.17

  In this acclaimed meditation on the British state, its identity and culture, Tom Nairn sees the monarchy both as its apex and its essence, the symbol of a national backwardness. This powerful, analytical, and bitterly funny book lays bare Britain's peculiar, pseudo-modern, national identity, one that remains fixated on the Crown and its constitutional framework, the parliamentary sovereignty of Westminster.

• Used

  Paperback
  1994

  $3.44

  Refusing to treat the Royal Family as a jokey left-over from feudalism or a mere tourist attraction, Tom Nairn sees the monarchy as both apex and essence of the British State, and presents an analysis of the specific backwardness that explains this phenomenon. The monarchy has been symbol and guarantor of Great Britain's peculiar entry into modernity: the first-comer unable to break free from its origins, and still bound to these by patrician rituals which no later developer has had to imitate. Instead, the Anglo-British evolved a pseudo- modern national identity around the Crown and its constitutional framework - the parliamentary sovereignty of Westminster.