http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/6370/fullUtopias of abandoning the past and embracing a very different future have generally been the quickest route to dystopias of destruction, callousness and ignorance — not that that prevented New Labour from parroting the idea.
These two new editions of works first published in 1997 and 1985 respectively underline the duality of deep histories that structure and mould the present age and of the impact of current perceptions, concerns and assumptions in the reading of the past. This duality is scarcely new. Shakespeare’s Henry V (1599) tells us as much about an England under threat from Spain, the world-empire, and defining a new nationalism as about the pursuit of French territory by an early 15th-century ruler. The same is true of 20th-century portrayals of the monarch.
This transience makes any attempt to fix the past problematic. In particular, the element of transience ensures that books that the blurb-writers proclaim as definitive are anything but, and also means that the panoply of authority and reference in the shape of encyclopedias, historical dictionaries, historical atlases, companion guides and so on, is more fragile than it appears. And so with the Oxford Companion. The first edition reflected John Cannon’s particular version of left-of-centre politics, and the new edition, while cautious of partisanship, is not too different. It certainly shows the difficulties of prediction. The UKIP entry ends: “The expectation remained that the party could split the Conservative vote at the 2015 general election.” Ed Miliband is still leader of Labour, indeed “relatively secure in the post”. There is also a fair amount of uncritical praise. For example, the entry on the Olympics in Britain, which in practice is only on the 2012 Olympics, ignores the extent to which the Games did not promote exercise as anticipated. Yet, the piece on the welfare state correctly discerns concern over costs, dependency and affordability.
The book is presented as “the essential authoritative reference book on over 2,000 years of British history”. It is not of course that. In particular, there is too little on the local and the regional, on the places and spaces that are so significant to senses of identity and to the experience of the wider developments discussed. On the plus side, the writing is generally precise and concise, the level of detail good, and there is room for some of the more unusual episodes of national life.
