ABSTRACT
This book was written about cultural feelings within a specific national context. That national context, however, is not easy to specify in any clear and concise fashion. Some of what I’ve been writing about has been focused either explicitly or implicitly on London (although Newcastle has made its presence felt). When I type ‘London’ into my search engine, Wikipedia tells me that it is the capital city of England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. Confusingly, it is not the only capital city in Great Britain and the United Kingdom (Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast are also capital cities). Today London is one of the most cosmopolitan cities on the planet: you don’t expect to hear the person next to you speaking English. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is a native Londoner, a Sunni Muslim and the son of working-class British Pakistanis (his father was a bus driver, his mother a seamstress). In his particularity, Khan articulates a condition shared by many: identity, belonging and nation is a complex assemblage of different components. Raymond Williams, whose spirit hangs over this book, often described himself as a Welsh European.
