Feel Britannia: John Mullan
SERIES: We ask writer and UCL academic John Mullan "What makes you feel emotional about Britain?"
John Mullan
With all the rhetoric and Big Ideas surrounding the general election, Culture Whisper wanted to collect some of the little things that spark emotions about Britain.
In anticipation of May 7, we asked our favourite figures in the arts to tell us what makes Britain feel like home.
Professor of Literature at UCL, John Mullan:
"the poems of George Herbert, Tristram Shandy, Jane Austen, Wordsworth's The Prelude, Falstaff and Dr Johnson (what he wrote, what he said, what he was). Also the diaries of Virginia Woolf – the paintings of Constable and everything by Hogarth – Thomas Hardy novels and the real Dorset – the North Norfolk coast – cricket and Philip Larkin and Fawlty Towers - and I'm afraid that I am a sucker for Elgar's Cello Concerto. Put it on again!"
John Mullan is a professor of English at University College London and Man Booker Prize judge. He regularly writes for The Guardian, LRB and New Statesman.
In anticipation of May 7, we asked our favourite figures in the arts to tell us what makes Britain feel like home.
Professor of Literature at UCL, John Mullan:
"the poems of George Herbert, Tristram Shandy, Jane Austen, Wordsworth's The Prelude, Falstaff and Dr Johnson (what he wrote, what he said, what he was). Also the diaries of Virginia Woolf – the paintings of Constable and everything by Hogarth – Thomas Hardy novels and the real Dorset – the North Norfolk coast – cricket and Philip Larkin and Fawlty Towers - and I'm afraid that I am a sucker for Elgar's Cello Concerto. Put it on again!"
John Mullan is a professor of English at University College London and Man Booker Prize judge. He regularly writes for The Guardian, LRB and New Statesman.
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