ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the English Channel as a liminal space, an Anglo-French in-between space that has crucially shaped British national identity. It explores the Channel shows that the British 'island story' is by no means the whole story: crucially, the Channel serves as a cultural contact zone, a space of exchange where English and French fortunes have been woven together, quite literally in the Bayeux Tapestry, from the time of the Norman Conquest. Julian Barnes depicts the Channel in terms of a chronotope, to use Mikhail Bakhtin's term, where narratives of the past, historical time and the Channel space are inextricably entangled. Although, topo-logically speaking, the Channel provides a link that both connects and divides, it is also a geographical expanse, made up – beyond the water that carries boats and covers the tunnel – of islands, and islands have played a significant role in literary negotiations of identity.
