The Emergencergence of the EngEnglish

by Su Susan Oosthuizen Arc ArcH Humanities Press Apr 2019 20 £16.95 pp149 p pb isbn 9781641891271 97

This little book is a stimulating, enjoyable review of English origins, thoroughly up to date but also reaching back to influential 19thcenury historians and owing much to Fernand Braudel’s championing of long-term processes. In a carefully built argument, and with lengthy footnotes and many references (a longer index would have been useful), Oosthuizen challenges the assumption that Englishness first appeared exclusively in Anglo-Saxon settlement. Focusing on landscape, especially

what she identifies as common land, she argues from history and archaeology for substantial social continuity: prehistoric tracks and fields apparently still in use through Roman and later times, she says, demonstrate a stability that belies notions of immigrants driving change. Oosthuizen is convincing on the importance of understanding landscapes, but the idea that immigration would have disrupted the physical arrangement of land use perhaps needs to be demonstrated, not assumed. Mike Pitts