A yearning process

HELEN CARR applauds a timely examination of the great British obsession with venerating the past, and its impact on our understanding of the challenges we face in the present

- HELEN CARR

Rule, Nostalgia: A Backwards History of Britain

by Hannah Rose Woods WH Allen, 400 pages, £20

In 2020, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the British media took to invoking the "Blitz spirit". Harking back to the Second World War, the phrase effectively urged us to "Keep Calm and Carry On", disinfecting our much-coveted packets of pasta while NHS workers "on the front line" struggled against the virulent disease.

To many historians of wartime Britain, this kind of romantic reference to the Blitz - which destroyed homes, split families and massacred innocents - seems like bizarre collective amnesia. Yet it was employed by both the government and the press to instil a sense of nostalgia for hard times - or, as historian Hannah Rose Woods puts it in her debut book, "myths of exaggerated stoicism". It played on our national pride and our love of looking back to a purer and happier time.

This moment in the wake of successive lockdowns, having emerged blinking into the light, awkwardly shaking hands, and hugging again is a timely one for the publication of Rule, Nostalgia. In it, Woods examines why we look to the past for comfort in times of crisis, and asks what it is about Britain's past that inspires such a sentimental longing.

Woods begins by assessing our reaction to the global pandemic, particularly the frequent references to world wars. She discusses how working together as a nation to deliver community aid, behaviour reminiscent of the togetherness of the wartime generation, came to the fore not least when more than a million British civilians volunteered to provide crucial healthcare to the vulnerable and to administer vaccines. And she notes that, when the Queen addressed the nation two weeks into the first lockdown, she echoed Second World War darling Vera Lynn's famous words: "We'll meet again."