Pomp and Circumstance

On patriotism and waving the flag

The Death of Major Peirson, 6 January 1781, painted in 1783 by John Singleton Copley

Players and painted stage took all my love

And not those things that they were emblems of.

From The Circus Animals’ Desertion by WB Yeats

                                                         Patriotism

Is not unChristian; it’s not Christian either,

I beg to plead.

From Scenes from Comus by Geoffrey Hill

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This weekend, a large arena in the western part of London will become a sea of union flags, and patriotic British tunes will soar into the autumn evening outside. It’s time for the Last Night of the Proms.

Even those people who never listen to classical music, much less attend a concert, know about the Last Night. Although the first half of the concert is a fairly typical one, usually excellent, the second half is largely given over to the playing and singing of tunes that are supposed to stir the British heart. The centrepiece is Edward Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 in D major, to which the words of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ will be sung. There will also be a rendition of “Rule Britannia.”

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I’m a classical music fan, and for me the BBC Proms, a series of concerts spread over the summer from June to September, is one of the delights of an English summer. The Proms go back to 1895 and are steeped in tradition. The main venue is the Royal Albert Hall.

Over the years, the Proms has done a huge amount to promote the popularity of classical music in the country and introduce audiences to new music to go alongside old favourites. It’s one of the biggest classical music events in the world and is truly international in scope and tenor, even if based mostly in London.

Edward Elgar, whose Pomp and Circumstance March No.1 is perhaps the most famous part of the Last Night, has long been associated with the proms. His music possesses a particular English timbre (especially perhaps the gorgeous Enigma Variations), though there is a taste of Europe, especially Italy, in some of his work (such as In the South (Alassio)).

One of my most cherished musical experiences was listening to his first symphony at the Proms a few years ago. The sublime opening and closing of the work, especially, both seemed to gain both pathos and gravitas from the magnificent surroundings of the Royal Albert Hall.

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I won’t be watching the Last Night, however. The flag waving, the loud celebration of the long-past dominion of the oceans by the British Navy and the boisterous invocation of an undefeatable “Britannia” are not for me.

For some, this makes my attachment to my country seem a little suspect. Add in the fact that I don’t like pubs, don’t follow football (soccer) and dislike all forms of pageantry, and then I am no doubt seen as outright unpatriotic in some quarters.

As someone who spent his career representing the UK in other countries and who did so with pride, that reaction saddens me a little. As a person who loves so many aspects of his country, from its gentle countryside to its atmospheric seaside towns, from its history of trade unionism and defence of workers’ rights to its astonishing cultural achievements over the centuries, it also bewilders me.

In his 1945 essay England Your England George Orwell wrote, “In England all the boasting and flag-wagging, the ‘Rule Britannia’ stuff, is done by small minorities.” When I look at the popularity of the Last Night, I’m not sure if that is true any more.

In the 2024 UK election, the Labour party started making more use of the flag in a (futile) attempt to bolster its support among the working class, who have largely deserted it. ¹ This flag-waving Britain seems different from the country I’d grown up in, where you demonstrated your love of country through actions such as voting, paying taxes, respecting institutions that worked well and seeking to change the many that don’t.

There were no flags on display at school. They weren’t part of daily life. There didn’t seem to be any need for it to be so. Patriotism was a private matter.

There ought to be room for many kinds of patriotism. Although I find the recent fetishisation of the flag both unnecessary and unattractive, I am the first to recognise that there are others who are happy to wrap themselves in the flag’s embrace. And if I don’t think they are more patriotic for doing so, nor do I think they are any less so on that account either.

We each have our own vision of our country and our own relationship to it. In my view, we don’t need a flag, or any other symbol, or indeed other people to mediate that for us. As Mark Twain once said, “I would not take my patriotism from my neighbour or from Congress.” ²

In the same essay I quoted from above, Orwell also wrote, “In England patriotism takes different forms in different classes, but it runs like a connecting thread through nearly all of them.” I’d like to think that the colour and texture of that thread are as varied and individual for each of us as they are in other aspects of our lives.

Purity tests of who can shout the loudest or declare the most exaggerated allegiance to some ancient idea of England or its empire should, I feel, be resisted.

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One of the most famous quotes about patriotism in English is Samuel Johnson’s "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." These words are sometimes taken to be dismissive of patriotism. But it’s clear from Johnson’s pamphlet The Patriot, written at about the same time, that he took patriotism very seriously indeed. ³ Indeed, because of that, he held patriots to a high standard and was alert to the possibility that those who spoke in the name of their country might actually be doing it harm:

“A man sometimes starts up a patriot, only by disseminating discontent, and propagating reports of secret influence, of dangerous counsels, of violated rights, and encroaching usurpation.

This practice is no certain note of patriotism. To instigate the populace with rage beyond the provocation, is to suspend publick happiness, if not to destroy it.”

And the person who recorded Johnson’s famous dictum, his biographer James Boswell, commented:

He did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak for self-interest.

Another curmudgeonly English writer of a slightly later period, William Cobbett, whose Rural Rides hugely impressed me as a teenager, is a different example of the complexity of patriotism.

Cobbett was a fierce defender of ordinary people, especially those in the countryside, and supported universal (male) suffrage at a time when this was an extreme view in England. The cultural theorist Raymond Williams, according to the historian Linda Colley, captured Cobbett’s peculiarly pastoral patriotism in this way:

The smell of baking bread, the glow of the cheek at the oven ... the look of fine young oaks along the Weald, of the beauty and usefulness of ash trees; of the bright water meadows by the Ouse, the clouds above the trees of Penyard Hill, the flocks of sheep to Appleshaw fair; nuts and apples at Newbury, wildfowl at Petersfield, nightingales at Chilworth; white wheat on the clay. ⁴

It’s beguiling in its way. And his Rural Rides helped shape my vision of the English countryside, even though I’d grown up in it and experienced it for myself.

Yet Cobbett was also a bigot and the holder of some repugnant views. For example, at a time when anti-slavery was a popular sentiment in England, he opposed abolition. Patriotism was mixed up with Cobbett’s unique blend of progressive and reactionary views. Love of country is not always a marker of virtue in all aspects of one’s political makeup or character.

Cobbett, who spent time in the US and in France, was also an internationalist. In England, it became fashionable in recent years to dismiss internationalism as incompatible with true love of one’s country. Just a few years ago, the then Prime Minister of the UK, Theresa May, talked dismissively of a “citizen of the world, citizen of nowhere.” This was taken as a purity test that suggested that internationalists couldn’t be patriots.

If we turn to that staunchly English writer Milton, who argued so trenchantly for a particular (republican) vision of England, it seems his patriotism was actually forged in the history and culture of Rome:

What Milton gets more than anything else from seeing Italy is the freedom or confidence to conceive a great national epic—not an Italian or Latin poem, not even, here, a biblical poem, but a Virgilian Arthuriad… Like the Aeneid, it will explain the origins of the nation and it will not shrink from difficulties: it will tell of Trojan ships off the coast of Kent, the expansion of the people across the land into Brittany, and even the conception of the hero in an act of Aeneid-like deception (ll. 162–69). In this newfound freedom, it is difficult not to see just how Milton’s nationalism finds one of its most potent enabling conditions in his internationalism. ⁵

Back in the sphere of music, George Friedrich Handel is rightly celebrated as one of England’s finest composers. His Messiah and its “Hallelujah” chorus, along with the lovely Water Music commissioned by George I, make him an icon of English classical music. But this German-born musician also composed a wonderful series of operas and oratorios in Italian, from Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno to Xerxes. He was, in short, another outstanding English internationalist and patriot.

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Of course, those of us who profess a quiet patriotism and are comfortable pointing out our country’s failings while avoiding coarse “boasts” about the country’s imperialistic past occasionally are also subject to moments of chauvinistic reaction. Countless times in the course of my years overseas in public service, I was subjected to the view that English food is something of a joke.

At times, I found myself repeating almost word for word Orwell’s frustrated response on this topic:

I even read quite recently, in a book by a French writer, the remark: ‘The best English cooking is, of course, simply French cooking.’ Now that is simply not true. As anyone who has lived long abroad will know, there is a whole host of delicacies which it is quite impossible to obtain outside the English-speaking countries. No doubt the list could be added to, but here are some of the things that I myself have sought for in foreign countries and failed to find. First of all, kippers, Yorkshire pudding, Devonshire cream, muffins and crumpets.

Orwell goes on to mention such delicacies as treacle tart and apple dumplings in his rant. ⁶

To be honest, I was rarely successful in getting across the merits of English cuisine. But that’s fine. As Twain also said when talking of patriotism, “We cannot all agree. That is most fortunate. If we could all agree life would be too dull.”

So I’m happy to disagree with my compatriots on the value of the flag or warm beer or even English custard. I won’t think them less English or patriotic for not sharing my views, and I expect them to extend the same courtesy to me. No one has a monopoly on how to be patriotic.

And it’s absolutely fine with me if, on the Last Night of the Proms (13th September this year), some will desire to hear or even sing along with Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March no. 1, while I, though enjoying the music of the same wonderful English composer, will be listening to a different tune.

1. For more recent comments from Labour politicians on flags, see here.

2. See here for this quote and the next one from Twain.

3. I’m indebted to Dr Oliver Teague’s excellent blog Interesting Literature for his observations on Johnson’s patriotism.

4. London Review of Books, 20 November 2003.

5. Pietas in Patriam: Milton’s Classical Patriotism, 2022.

6. In defence of English cooking, 1945. Orwell’s main point was that English cooking was good but really only done well in private houses, not in restaurants.