Endorsements

'The fall and rise of the English upper class deftly combines a huge range of case studies, from close readings of political memoirs to an ethnography of a bookshop, to contend that our national imagination still hinges upon this privileged group. Smith's book is a rare account of the group whose power is in its invisibility: the aristocracy.' Laura Clancy, Lecturer in Media at Lancaster University and author of Running the Family Firm 'An astonishing exploration of a contemporary moment - the one that exploded with Brexit - this book creeps up on late modernity in a way that no direct address could. Smith shows how the idiom of the house perpetuates a world simultaneously lost and made, problematising Englishness in the most profound way.' Marilyn Strathern, University of Cambridge How has England's historic upper class once again come to occupy such a prominent position in English public life? Over the second half of the twentieth century, Great Britain's protracted imperial decline also saw its rigid class structure gradually decay. Since 2016, however, English society has witnessed a surprising resurgence of its upper class, whose status and traditionalist worldviews have come to shape UK politics, culture, and the sense of our collective future. The fall and rise of the English upper class examines how these traditionalist views are unified by a common thread: English society is imagined through idioms of kinship and inheritance, formed around the densely symbolic image of the house. From 'Establishment' institutions to the ancestral homes of the landed gentry and aristocracy, the message underlying these institutions and cultural ideals is: who inherits the house, inherits England. By exploring the history of English society's passage to capitalism and its curious class structure, this book examines the writings of upper-class figures - from Rory Stewart to Roger Scruton - to illustrate how anxieties about the future always find their answer in the traditions of the past.