Jerusalem – Blake, Parry and the Fight for Englishness

Jason Whittaker

Oxford University Press 256pp (hb) £25 When my schoolmates and I belted out ‘Jerusalem’ in the 1950s, we knew instinctively what it purveyed: a simple socialist message. But as Jason Whittaker makes clear, William Blake’s lapidary lines initially caused great exegetic confusion. Whittaker’s subtitle, ‘Blake, Parry and the Fight for Englishness’, indicates the three main elements in this brilliant book, which is both the tangled history of a song, and an up-tothe-minute essay on social history, with ‘Jerusalem’ reflecting many contrary kinds of Englishness.

Through the prism of ‘Jerusalem’ – long a contender to be our national anthem – we view the politics of the Great War and the ’20s, with Hubert Parry’s Blake espoused first by the army and then by the suffragette movement. Throughout much of the 20th century it was owned by the Women’s Institute and the Proms, with Elgar’s bombastic arrangement setting the seal on it as an expression of quintessential conservatism.

But this book is fascinating on what people have done with it over the past 30 years, with hardleft playwrights and filmmakers balanced by Brexiteers and the far right. Blake the revolutionary was never more relevant.

Michael Church ★★★★★