The author of ‘Pompa y Circumstance’ and director of Cervantes in London brings together his articles on Anglophone subjects in the book ‘Un aire ingls’
how to synthesize the articles on England that Ignacio Peyr has gathered in an English air (Frcola)? There is a hypothesis: to be English is to live marked by the coldness of the parents, the cruelty of the schools and the long training in detachment… but it is also to look for alternative ways to express emotions: through a garden, of a living room, of a tie, of a picturesque landscape, of a calligraphic notebook… And Peyr, in his texts, explores that intimacy.
English sentimentality exists and has curious manifestations. Alcohol has always been there, of course, but there is also written language. If we opened a greeting card business in Spain, we would starve. On the other hand, in England it is a very booming business because the written text is the free bar for sentimentality. The plaques in the parks are also a relief: on each bench you will see a text that says ‘Mrs. more than the frown and the pursed lip, explains Peyr.
The interesting thing, as always, is to take the anecdote and turn it into something broader, into a way of understanding reality. In his new book, Peyr, director of the Cervantes Institute in London, author of the dictionary of Anglophiles pomp and circumstance and collaborator of La Lectura, the new cultural magazine of EL MUNDO, looks for English sentimentality in Kipling, in dandyism, in the obsession with the past, in architecture… There is a lot of architecture in An English Air, a lot of country house and a lot of middle class townhouse.
England has been conservative in architecture because it is a country haunted by its past. You think that the great spiritual forces of the nineteenth century, which is its great century, were in the hands of medievalistssays Peyr. And why is that? Because they were afraid of a progress that might break the most sacred of the image that England had of itself. They became convinced that the decorative arts of the industrial revolution were a failure and began to search for a remote and idealized past, una merry England, with its rector, its cathedral and its main street. The grace is that this idealization included its share of mystification. This is why Oxford is full of Greco-Roman architecture, each city has its Gothic cathedral in the French style and so many interiors that are orientalizing pastiches, bordering on the kitsch.
The English have been better at the picturesque village than the city. London is a very poorly planned city, it has a very old and irregular layout: leaving London by car is difficult. Instead, there is a very strong notion of the domestic linked to that of freedom. That idea of ’my house is my castle’ is very English, says Peyr.
And he continues: Spain is a culture of foreigners. Instead, the English genius is in those soft environments, in those checkered pavements, in the chesters and in love because everything is a bit worn out, for not having to buy your canalettos.
The other thesis that is intuited in an English air is that England is a society in which social codes are strict but in which there is also room for the most unusual eccentricities, the most… sentimental. If you work in the City, if you go to a club or a church, the way of dressing is very codified. Belonging codes are inevitable. But beware: if you accept the code, you can make your little statement of individuality. This book is full of characters who seem extreme but, in reality, only push the codes to the limit, because in them a place for fantasy is foreseen. There is even a point of irony… There is an eccentricity clause and a strong sense of individual freedom, so if you know the rules, there will be no blame.
So freedom has its complexities but it’s not badly resolved in the UK. The problem is equality, the eternal obsession with social classes that in Peyr’s book is referred to as english smallpox. In fact, every English policy since World War II is regarding inequality. Also those of the conservatives. Margaret Thatcher only wanted to create a country of middle classes, explains Peyr. The conclusion is that England, like all countries, looks less and less like its caricature. Neither are social classes so rigid, nor is modern architecture foreign, nor are families stingy with kisses. And perhaps it is that, the fear of normality, that leads to the sentimentality of the Brexit.
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