English Journey by J. B. Priestley
As an English teacher of nearly forty years it was impossible for me to not know about Priestley. After all, his 1945 play ‘An Inspector Calls’ is a staple of most GCSE courses. And it’s right that it should be as it is an accessible, entertaining study of class issues in mid 20th century Britain; there aren’t many students who don’t get something from its carefully structured plot set in one location on one night. If you haven’t seen it on stage or in one of the many screen adaptations, it’s worth watching. It is of its time but not in an off putting, creaky manner, and its exploration of personal responsibility is as relevant today as it was when written.
My conclusion about English Journey will be much the same – it’s of its time but still, surprisingly, relevant. There, I’ve given away my ending in a way that Priestley, a professional craftsman with words, would have stylishly avoided. However, I’ve plenty more to say about this extremely influential book and will do so in a moment, but first let me explain why I decided to read it.
A few months ago, I listened to an excellent documentary on Radio 4’s Archive series about Priestley. It was made by Stuart Maconie, who wanted to make a modern audience aware about what an important cultural figure Priestley was in Britain during the 20th century. Now, although I had taught his play on numerous occasions, there were no marks for biographical insights and anyway Priestley’s political views are manifest in the way the plot unfolds. I had a vague memory of English Journey but was, to my shame, ignorant of Priestley’s background. Until Maconie’s excellent programme, I did not realise that Priestley was prolific in a range of creative and non-fiction genres, and was also a well-known figure regularly broadcasting to the nation on the radio or during discussion programmes in the early days of television.
Aside from a consummate skill with words, which it appears was the result of putting in the ten thousand hours of practice that Matthew Syed has identified as the key to developing expertise, Priestley was also a distinctive character. He was born in Bradford in 1894 to a solid middle-class family. Although he left school at 16 he gained a university education after the First World War in which he had been seriously wounded. His initial career was in essay writing and journalism until the success of his novel The Good Companions moved him into the literary big league. He maintained his love of the north, the community values of socialism and high regard for the traditions of England and good sense of its people. This was allied to a zest for life and a rather racy personal life. As you can see, a beguiling mixture; and it was this that initially sparked my interest in reading something by him following Maconie’s programme. When Maconie described An English Journey as “The finest book ever written about England and the English”, my choice was clear.
By 1933 Priestley was an established literary figure and received a commission from his publishers to travel around England and write about his experiences in order to give a personal impression of the state of the nation. I am currently reading a book about the year 1962 in Britain and it’s interesting to note that in that tumultuous year, just prior to Larkin’s Annus Mirabilis, The Telegraph sent one of its correspondents on a similar, if shorter, version of Priestley’s project. It seems obvious to state that people always tend to think that the time they are living through is seminal and that important conclusions about the state of the nation need to be drawn. However, 1933, that between the war period of economic and political turmoil here and abroad, seems a fertile period for Priestley’s consideration. It’s even suggested that Orwell’s influential account of his time in England’s changing industrial heartlands, The Road to Wigan Pier, was inspired by Priestley’s book.
A review of this sort of book faces many of the problems faced in a review about a murder mystery – once one has explained the set-up, deciding what details to then reveal is a tricky matter. Priestley’s structure is straightforward: he starts in Southampton and moves around the country before finishing up at Lincoln and Norfolk. During these visits, he describes the state of the towns and the countryside around him as well as the people he encounters, and he also uses these experiences to reflect on different aspects of English life – its culture, its economic future and its role as a major world power, that he understands is in decline, are just some of these. His method is to focus in on the particular, a visit to the theatre or a factory, a conversation with a fellow guest in his hotel or an old school friend in Bradford and then he expands from there. The problem, though, is that as can be seen from his biography his distinct personality means that he takes a distinct approach to each subject. Therefore, if I were to tell you that he has a low opinion of the Irish, you might come to a conclusion about his perspective at odds with the warm, humane and empathetic attitude he has to the vast majority people he meets during his travels. His low opinion of the Irish is a generalisation based on the Navvies who came over to modernise the country’s infrastructure. He is struck by their lack of personal hygiene, ignorance and drunkenness. What did he expect from men of their background and lack of opportunities? His error, of course, aside from failing to contextualising their situation is to generalise. This is something he is prone to do and he is noticeably more sympathetic to the innate decency and industry of those northern workers hanging around on street corners as the factories, shipyards and furnaces decline.
Ultimately, all his conversations and observations are an attempt to define what it is to be English at this point in our country’s history. This has been an increasingly more important question in the first two decades of the 21st century as we try to understand what it means to be a modern multicultural country. In contrast to his comments on the Irish, he is strongly ant-racist in relation to the empire and in his stark warnings about the dangers of Europe’s fascist leaders with their anti-Semitic, nationalistic ideology. This seems more in keeping with his well-known socialist principles and belief that people need to look out for one another in society. His writing is said to have also influenced the Beveridge Report and it is fair to say he would be appalled about the growing economic disparity in our society. However, as a man of his time, he also expected people to take responsibility alongside the support he was urging the government to provide. This makes me curious to know how he would feel about some of the consequences of our more empathetic society which has a tendency to, often inadvertently, support people in their victimhood. Those words, of course, betray me as a man of my generation, generalising about lives I know little about based on my experiences teaching and what I see in the media – I can see that Priestley had a tough brief.
Fair play, though, to the great man of letters as he spent months travelling around the country and mixing with all levels of society. He was probably as well-informed as anyone trying to grasp that most slippery of subjects – who are we, the English, right now, at this time? The success of such a book as this depends on how much you enjoy spending time travelling with the chronicler of the nation. I did. I enjoyed it as a social history and as a thought-provoking exploration of our national characteristics. Priestley seemed, on the whole, to be fair in his assessment of his experiences, was right on all the big issues and had great curiosity about the places and people he encountered. It is hard not to be struck by the fact that the issues of concern to him – the influence of the media, authoritarian governments, social inequality, the flaws in our education system, the lack of an economic strategy for the country, and so on – are the same issues we are wrestling with today. That ought to make me depressed but I have imbibed Priestley’s positive belief that perhaps we might just muddle through.