What England Is and What It Claims to Be: Orwell on National Identity

This article suggests that George Orwell's body of work offers a rather unique and insightful two‐part conception of national identity in the context of England, made up of a moral inheritance—the values of liberty, fairness and decency—and a lived sensibility—the fluid, experiential quality of collective life expressed in shared customs, habits and culture. It argues that the moral inheritance supplies the standard by which England can be held to account, while the lived sensibility provides the emotional register through which political argument must speak to be persuasive. Utilising this conception, it contends that his vision of a patriotic socialism remains instructive today, with potential to offer the contemporary left a model for grounding its radical demands in an authentic national narrative, as well as a more academic means of exploring the concept of Englishness, and even national identity, more broadly.