Finding England everywhere: regional identity and the construction of national identity, 1890-1940

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between regional and national identity in England in the first half of the twentieth century. It explores the ways in which England was imaginatively constructed through regional identities and their uniqueness. It further argues that this amounted to a powerful myth of regionalism in England which informed a discourse of national unity, particularly in the interwar years. Taking the example of the Cotswolds - a limestone hill region in central southern England - the paper shows how a unique regional identity was constructed through a corpus of local writing which also invoked the Cotswolds as an ideal version of England. The paper also examines more wide-ranging examples found in topographical writing from the first half of the twentieth century which reveal how England’s regions were mobilized to represent something of the nation.