Intellectualism In Dominic Sandbrook's Do They Mean Us

It doesn’t help to be oversensitive, but sometimes it’s hard to avoid it. “Literary intellectuals love to sneer at polls and surveys,” writes Dominic Sandbrook in his determinedly informative and frequently entertaining attempt to analyse what makes British culture tick, “but historians cannot afford to do so.” The survey being putatively sneered at reveals the immense popularity of The Lord of the Rings; presumably the implications of that popularity, rather than the fact of it, which must surely be beyond contention. But it’s one of those defensive statements that makes you feel immediately defensive, not to mention confused: “Am I ‘literary’?” you think. “Or ‘intellectual’? Am I a ‘literary intellectual’? Do I sneer? But I like Lord of the Rings”, and so forth. It might even bring to mind a 1980s television programme, forgivably unmentioned by Sandbrook, but also much concerned with perceptions of national culture, Derek Jameson’s Do They Mean Us? (the host, as some will remember, repeated the title and added with relish: “They surely do!”).

Do They Mean Us? focused on how Britain appeared in foreign news programmes; Sandbrook is more interested in how the country appears to itself, and how this appearance is mashed up and mediated across time, class and location to emerge in its music, literature, …show more content…
This is where Sandbrook is at his best: neither castigatory nor defensive, simply telling a fascinating story. The section “Champagne in Bingley”, which details the journey of the author of Room at the Top from provincial anonymity to lunches with Kingsley Amis, Robert Conquest and Anthony Powell is gripping, not least because Braine seems such a shit. Entries in the index give you the flavour: “disgraces himself in Kingsley Amis’s bedroom / robust views on benefits of slavery / robust views on benefits of smoking / robust views on benefits of South African