Testimony and Advocacy in Victorian Law, Literature and Theology Book

This is fantastically stimulating and rather ingenious. Light's thesis ' that the domestic and the feminine became central in constructions of Englishness during the interwar years ' is convincingly argued. This thesis is set out explicitly in the Introduction and the Conclusion. In the intervening chapters, we're given a kind of chronology of this process through several in-depth literary case studies: from the shock of war found in the work of Ivy Compton-Burnett, to the 'compromise' of Agatha Christie's middlebrow murder mysteries, and to the self-confident homeliness of Jan Struther's Mrs Miniver. Forever England reminds historians of the importance of historicising seemingly self-evident categories; in this case, conservatism and middle-classness. One should always interrogate as a historian, and this book is a testament to the fruitfulness of these sorts of projects. This was such a pleasure to read!