Increpatio, I should have thought something more like this ridiculous publication (of which, strangely enough, I have read a couple of issues from cover to cover, but that was in Southern California, where strange things happen, to me anyway):
... and, to save you all going to the trouble of asking Prof Wikipedia what it's all about, this is what he/she says:
This England is a quarterly magazine, published in spring, summer, autumn and winter, "for all those who love England's green and pleasant land".
I've seen this thing, too - and I have to say that its sheer level and consistency of absurdity were such that I read three whole issues before it dawned upon me that this was not, after all, a delicious spoof along the lines of
Private Eye but was written for real (by which I do not, of course, mean that its content has the remotest connection with actual reality, but that it is intended to be taken seriously and at face value).
It has a large readership among expatriates,
In the colonies, presumably; well, one could hardly imagine it being on sale at the local W H Smith (unless surreptitiously half-concealed among the light porno on the top shelf); who else but ex-pats would read it?
many of whom are elderly,
...and mentally challenged, one might surmise; hardly surprising, this.
and concentrates on the values and customs of England -- especially rural and small-town England -- in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. The magazine started in 1967 with the slogan "As Refreshing as a Cup of Tea!";
Yes, those delightful years in which economic hardship, slump, high unemployment, world war and post-war privation at the hands of the rationing scam followed one another in sickening succession; and that particular "cup of tea" came, of course, from India, not from China or anywhere else...
it is still edited by its founder, Lincolnshire-born Roy Faiers, and is based in Cheltenham. This England boasts a circulation of 150,000 [1].
I suppose that the very fact that it's somehow managed to survive for four decades - and especially under the same editorship - is something for which some kind of grudging admiration might be appropriate. Yes, it would be based in Cheltenham, now wouldn't it?!
The magazine maintains a strongly anti-European stance and is seen by some as arch-conservative and reactionary.
It does indeed and it has all three of those qualities in spades - i.e. it is arch, conservative (with both large and small "c") and reactionary. In fact, if one wanted a watered-down and somewhat less ingrained and entrenched version, one need look no farther than the considerably higher circulation magazine
Country Life, whose principal music critic, incidentally, happens to be the excellent Anthony Payne. I don't suppose that
This England feels the need to engage a music critic at all and, even if it did, the post would hardly be offered to one of those nasty modern composer types, now would it?! - so here is the only connectionbetween it and the thread topic (i.e. no connection at all).
It features articles against metrication,
...which is interesting, since Britain minted a florin in 1820 on which was emblazoned the words "one tenth of a pound" and, had it only gone that small step farther at that time, Britian would have led the field with its "decimal currency" some 150 years before it finally caved in to common sense and adopted it.
the European Union, multiculturalism and other issues which the readership may consider threats to English identity.
...all of which is most odd, given that Britain once owned part of northern France, that these head-in-the-sand little Englanders talk so often of "Anglo-Saxondom" as though Saxony were part of the Cotswolds and that, like France, Spain and Portugal, Britain has a long history of colonisation and so ought to expect to have ample multicultural fallout as a direct consequence; of course, the entire business of an "English identity" is utterly fatuous in any case.
In the 1990s, it lent its support to New Britain, a very small right-wing political group, which it praised as "the organisation which is campaigning for a complete revival of our country". The Autumn 1994 edition featured an advert for "Merrie England 2000", a publication by Colin Jordan.
I don't recall race riots in the vicinity of Cheltenham Ladies' College as a consequence, however...
In his 1998 book, The English: A Portrait of a People, Jeremy Paxman remarked that the magazine's greatest enemy was "the march of time", remarking that not one article in the magazine looks forward, although this is not always true.
I expect that this rag's readership would regard any such "march" as necessarily inferior to those of the "Pomp and Circumstance" kind (not that I imply any insult to Elgar in so saying, of course, especially since at least one of his six such pieces could almost be read as surreptitiously and subliminally subversive).
As well as selling recordings of music from the 1940s, it also offers traditional navy blue British passport covers for those who dislike the current European version, plus little British flags to "replace" the European flag which exists on the driving licence and the disabled "blue badge".
Quite what can be seen as so special about the 1940s as a time to celebrate I do not know; vast numbers of Britons lost their lives in the war during that time (as also did vast numbers of non-Britons, of course) and I would have thought that people would want to try to draw a veil over it all, learn some lessons from history and leave it at that, whereas one may presume that this rag's 1940s obsession must be rooted in nothing more substantial or credible than empty antediluvian jingoism.
The readers' letters in its "Post Box" section often reminisce about bygone days and are critical of various changes in England in the past fifty years, which they consider to be unwelcome, while the "Don't Let Europe Rule Britannia" section is devoted to its campaign against the EU.
Can one presume from this that the rag will eventually die a natural and unmourned death when the last reader that can actually remember living in mid-20th century England shuffles off his/her mortal English coil?
One recurring complaint in the letters section concerns the supposed preferential treatment given by British immigration authorities to British citizens of African and Asian origin, and to EU nationals like the French and the Germans, over their "kith and kin" (i.e. Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders), when arriving in the "Mother Country" from what it still calls the "British Commonwealth".
Now whilst so much of this rubbish is at least risible, that kind of thing is genuinely offensive - but it's also inexplicable; why would British Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders be regarded as meriting special treatement over the others? given that none of the countries involved actually asked for British involvement in the first place and a colony is a colony (while it remains one) wherever it happens to be situated. This is clearly a racially motivated stance, although even that doesn't fully offer any reason why those three countries' British citizens are rated differently from those of the others; after all, the typical colonising Briton's attitudes to and relationships with the indigenous populaces of all of those countries was pretty much of a (not very) muchness, it seems to me...
I know that one shouldn't take this kind of stuff seriously, but there are things (such as the racially inclined content) that cannot be wholly overlooked; I wonder what the typical attitude of the rag's readership is supposed to be towards its immediate neighbours, such as Welsh like you, Richard, or Scots like me? I cannot imagine that the thing sells all that well in Abertawe...
Anyway, that's more than enough for now about "this sceptre'd promontory" and this faded piece of theatrical jewellery, set in a murky grey pescatorially-challenged sea...
Best,
Alistair
