Rule Britannia, Brexit & identité cornouaillaise

Abstract

This article returns Rule Britannia to its own political, geographical and biographical context at a time when Daphne Du Maurier’s last novel has achieved a kind of afterlife in post-2016 Brexit referendum discourse. Vanishing Cornwall (1967) and The House on the Strand (1969) drew on visions of the past in a decade when the growing tourist industry was exploiting historical representations of the peninsula, but Rule Britannia (1972) was a new departure, marking a reorientation of Du Maurier’s relationship to contemporary Cornwall. The decision to take Britain into the European Common Market and the rise of Celtic nationalism had a clear bearing on the book. So too did Daphne’s move from Menabilly to Kilmarth, her personal relationship to Cornish people, and her continuing need for Cornwall as she faced her retirement from writing fiction.