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Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
1 month ago

Oh come on; grow up. Think of the great Victonan characters: Disraeli, Gladstone. And then Trollope, the guy that invented the pillar box and had a woman in one of his novels complain about an “iron stump.”
BTW: if you have anything nasty to say about George Eliot, it’s pistols at sunrise, pal.
And who can stand today before the magnificence of Lord Salisbury who declared “never trust experts.” My money says that if Lord Salisbury had been PM in 1914 there never would have been a Great War.

Graham Cunningham
Graham Cunningham
1 month ago

Lord Salisbury again: “Change? why change? aren’t things bad enough already!”

William Amos
William Amos
1 month ago

I believe that was Lord Wellington about the Reform Bill – but I stand to be corrected.

Peter B
Peter B
1 month ago

Doing a little background reading, it seems that Lord Salisbury got an “honorary fourth class in Mathematics, conferred by nobleman’s privilege due to ill health” from Oxford. First time I’ve ever heard of a “fourth”. Quite an achievement.
Also amusing to see his 1885-86 cabinet listing: 13 lords, 2 knights, 5 commoners.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
1 month ago

It should have been called the War of Kaiser Wilhelm’s Arm. That withered limb led to the psychological difficulties that resulted in the death of millions.

Brian Kneebone
Brian Kneebone
1 month ago

Britain was the first modern industrial, urban nation, and was such by, circa, 1880. A visitor from 1960 to 1880 would have seen much familiarity, whereas a visitor from 1880 to 1800 would have seen less. Inevitably, being the first modern nation has left the UK with an abundant legacy. Being a first mover has its downsides as well as its upsides. The fact that modern Britain has struggled to adapt is, in large part due to having been first, and the reluctance to build on its legacy. Navel gazing, head scratching, and giving up won’t turn things around.

J Bryant
J Bryant
1 month ago

It’s hardly surprising the UK is still dominated by the Victorian era because that era was the last time the UK was a preeminent nation (with all due respect to Unherd’s UK readers).
WWI shook the foundations of Britain and its empire (and probably its self-confidence), and WWII finished it off (and revealed that the UK’s great ally, America, wasn’t really its ally after all).
Since 1945 the UK has been asking “What next?”; trying to figure out its post-Imperial position in the world. Meanwhile, the hardy certitudes of the Victorians linger on through sheer self-confidence if nothing else.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
1 month ago
Reply to  J Bryant

If it hadn’t been for your “great ally,” the Soviet Union would have wiped the floor with you after the war and taken away what remained of the empire. A little humility, please.

Michael Cazaly
Michael Cazaly
1 month ago
Reply to  Jerry Carroll

Not sure that’s correct. Didn’t the Soviet Union actually stick to the “zones of influence” it had agreed with Britain and the USA? Is there evidence it intended not to do so, but was deterred by the USA?

William Amos
William Amos
1 month ago

“So why, then, do we imagine that everyone before the Sixties had the same strict morals as the Victorians?”

I don’t know a single decently lettered adult who thinks this. It is a pasquinade of straw men.
Nor could anyone with a healthy interest in our history imagine that Victorian Morality was ever the crude monolith of Lytton Strachey’s lingering libel in Eminent Victorians
It is quite astonishing the effect one mischievious book can have.
I fear that the ‘We’ referred to in this piece needs must refer to those literary-intellectual starvelings who still choose to form their understanding of the period based on the the sordid legacy of the Bloomsbury Clique.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
1 month ago
Reply to  William Amos

Everyone was bonking everyone else in that circle.

Matthew Freedman
Matthew Freedman
1 month ago

Its a pity that a lot of grand victorian architecture was replaced in the 1960s with grim architecture of the age.

Finn Koefoed-Nielsen
Finn Koefoed-Nielsen
1 month ago

“ Bashing the hypocrisy of Victorian morality and lamenting the darknesses of imperialism was the bread and butter of writers such as John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, or William Morris.”

Carlyle was famously criticised by JS Mill for his racist attitude towards West Indians, which suggests that he wasn’t very progressive even for the time.
Ruskin wrote enthusiastically about imperialism.
Not sure these were the Victorians you were looking for!

Don Lightband
Don Lightband
1 month ago

Terrific essaying, one that nonetheless neatly omits all consideration of a terrifying misconception. For Victorian talk unlike ours today, did NOT dissociate children, the body, and sex. They considered these all of a piece. One can only wonder at what point, and how, we brought about the catastrophic situation in which “a child” is either ‘pure as the driven snow’, OR saturated with sex (= sexualized) If Unherd readers are not intellectually up to taking on this brutal bifurcation which has led directly to more unhappiness than you can shake a shrivelled p***s at, then i say to hell with you and the miserable herd you rode in on…

John Dewhirst
John Dewhirst
1 month ago

Worth highlighting that the Victorian urban fabric survived firstly because the Luftwaffe’s bombs didn’t obliterate our cities like the USAF/RAF did to those in Germany. And secondly because the brave new world of postwar planners was thwarted by corruption and lack of money. By the 80s, the UK had also run out of ambition and imagination. Subsequently the nostalgia for Victoriana provided a comfort blanket and sense of security.