Disparate Identities Reconciled: Construction of “Britishness” in John Buchan’s The Free Fishers
Disparate Identities Reconciled: Construction of “Britishness” in John Buchan’s The Free Fishers

Summary/Abstract: "In the post-devolution era in Britain the centuries-ignored problematics of national identity have resurfaced with a particular force. The British identity, for a long time perceived as monolithic, shows signs of fracturing. With their own parliament back in Edinburgh, the Scots are at pains to divorce their ‘Scots’ identity from that of ‘North Briton’, while the English, cast adrift without an identity of their own outside ‘Britishness’, are casting around for manifestations of ‘Englishness’. In this context it may be of some interest to examine more closely the components from which the common ‘British’ identity was formed and do it through the eyes of a Scot, John Buchan (1875–1940), who seems to have successfully submerged his Scottish identity in a wider British one both in his private and professional lives."

• Details
• Contents