In our time Englishness has become a theme for speculation rather than dogma; twentieth-century writers have found it an elusive and ambivalent concept, a cue for nostalgia or for a sense of exile and loss. Literary Englands meditates on modern meanings of Englishness and explores some of the ways in which a sense of nationality has informed and shaped the work of a range of writers including Edward Thomas, Forster and Lawrence, Leavis and George Sturt, Orwell and Evelyn Waugh, Betjeman, Larkin and Geoffrey Hill.

The year is 1972, the age of hippies screaming for peace sweeps the land Long-haired boys and young girls wearing mini skirts, were trying to find themselves' The news reported on demonstrations at campuses across the country, where peace protests were carried out with violence. But a shy, seventeen year old boy in the Deep South is fascinated by a different movement spreading throughout the land. They called themselves Jesus People' and were speaking of a personal relationship with the Lord. He hungered and searched for a deeper walk with Christ. His search eventually led him to a group...