Peter Ackroyd: Albion (The Origins of the English Imagination)

In this ambitious tome, Peter Ackroyd sets out to identify an essential English imagination, and chart its development from neolithic times to the present. He searches for continuities in sculptures, art, literature, architecture and verbal traditions, and attempts to link them to a ‘national consciousness’.

Examples of the continuities he discovers include spiral patterns, found in ancient Celtic monuments and modern cathedrals alike and the alliterative line in poetry; in more general terms, he explores the influence of catholic art and morality plays on port-reformation English creatives.

Ackroyd is at his strongest as he describes the genesis of the imagination, from early poetry such as ‘Beowulf’ to the chronicles of monks like Bede. He presents the early English as being penned in on all sides by an unruly and frightening landscape, and suggests that this mindset inspired the character of Grendel in Beowulf and later manifested itself in the popularity of the Gothic novel.

The rural lifestyle of early communities also, says Ackroyd, planted the seed of the veneration of the natural world which would later be exemplified by the romantic poets, and influenced Shakespeare’s extensive use of pathetic fallacy.

From the times of King Alfred onwards, Ackroyd also identifies an antiquarian trait, as the English establishment sought to justify themselves through the development of a ‘glorious island history’ to rival the European powers. Thus, old manuscripts were painstakingly researched and restored, the myths of King Arthur spread like wildfire, and national symbols such as Britannia and the giant Albion became almost paganistic idols.

This rural isolation, combined with the antiquarian instinct, seems to have imbued the English psyche with an innate conservatism, possibly giving birth to the notion of the English as reserved and traditional. The thesis does, however, rest on the assumption that attitudes formed centuries before the common era can be inherited, generation upon generation.

Ackroyd’s book is, of necessity, a classicist work. However, his conclusions and comparisons are not always well backed-up. Is it simply enough to give two examples of writers describing trees, centuries apart, and from that assume that the Oak has had a major effect on the English consciousness for over 2,000 years?

The author’s sheer enthusiasm for his subject is both Albion’s main strength and weakness. Ackroyd admits in his introduction that there will be mistakes in his writing. This is excusable, but I feel the book would have been better served by detailed comparison of certain examples, rather than the ‘kid in a sweet shop’ approach he has adopted.

Theories which may well be sound are presented haphazardly, with little to back them up, and ideas fall over themselves in the author’s enthusiasm to get them onto the page. Inevitably, some statements become unreliable or inconclusive.

Furthermore, the classicist bent of the book unfortunately lends itself to repetition, which is why the opening section, dealing with the Anglo-Saxon imagination is the freshest and strongest. My one complaint here is that the book’s publishers don’t seem to know whether to position Albion as an academic resource or popular work; in the confusion, we find some Old English passages are translated for the modern reader, and some are not, forcing non-expert readers to guess at the meanings.

Whether Ackroyd’s conviction that there can be such a thing as a national imagination is correct is probably a matter for the individual reader to address; I suspect there is no right or wrong answer here. The book is certainly useful in illuminating large stretches of English history that are seldom (if ever) covered in school curricula or the popular media, and I would say that the opening section is essential reading; whether the narrative can sustain the reader’s interest beyond that stage is less certain.