The Last Englishmen
Love, War and the End of Empire
Published on 2. August 2018
Book
Hardback
384 pages
978-0-7011-8894-8 (ISBN)
Description
'Wholly original... It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that there is something Tolstoyan to Baker's vast project...remarkable' Neel Mukherjee
John Auden was a pioneering geologist of the Himalayas. Michael Spender was the first to survey the northern approach to the summit of Mount Everest. While their younger brothers - W.H Auden and Stephen Spender - achieved literary fame, they vied for a place on an expedition that would finally conquer Everest, a quest that had become a metaphor for Britain's efforts to maintain power over India. To this rivalry was added another: in the summer of 1938 both men fell in love with a painter named Nancy Sharp. Her choice would determine each man's wartime loyalties.
From Calcutta to pre-war London to the snowy slopes of Everest, The Last Englishmen tracks a generation obsessed with a romantic ideal. As political struggle rages in Spain, the march to war with Germany seems inevitable, Communist spies expand their ranks and the fight for Indian independence enters its final bloody act, writers and explorers, Englishmen and Indians must pick their cause.
The Last Englishmen is an engrossing story that traces the end of empire and the stirring of a new world order. It encourages us to look again at our national story, to seek out the viewpoints of those on the other end of unchecked power, and to question our own mythologies.
John Auden was a pioneering geologist of the Himalayas. Michael Spender was the first to survey the northern approach to the summit of Mount Everest. While their younger brothers - W.H Auden and Stephen Spender - achieved literary fame, they vied for a place on an expedition that would finally conquer Everest, a quest that had become a metaphor for Britain's efforts to maintain power over India. To this rivalry was added another: in the summer of 1938 both men fell in love with a painter named Nancy Sharp. Her choice would determine each man's wartime loyalties.
From Calcutta to pre-war London to the snowy slopes of Everest, The Last Englishmen tracks a generation obsessed with a romantic ideal. As political struggle rages in Spain, the march to war with Germany seems inevitable, Communist spies expand their ranks and the fight for Indian independence enters its final bloody act, writers and explorers, Englishmen and Indians must pick their cause.
The Last Englishmen is an engrossing story that traces the end of empire and the stirring of a new world order. It encourages us to look again at our national story, to seek out the viewpoints of those on the other end of unchecked power, and to question our own mythologies.
Reviews / Votes
Wholly original...a dense, rich, exhilarating piece of work that moves deftly between worlds and peoples...she keeps the big events always in view, dramatizing and humanizing the workings of history, particularly the story of empire and its machinations, in a way a novelist would - by making it a story of individuals... It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that there is something Tolstoyan to her vast project...remarkable -- Neel Mukherjee * Wall Street Journal * In The Last Englishmen, Deborah Baker has written an exuberant, scene-changing, shapeshifting group biography, with John Auden and Michael Spender as its chief human protagonists. But she makes the Himalayas, and Mount Everest, palpable and vivid characters in her story too -- Richard Davenport-Hines * Spectator * Deborah Baker combines a novelistic alertness to the inner life with an anthropologist's understanding of multiple cultures and a historian's eye for major events. The result, yet again, is a continuously absorbing and stimulating book, which enlarges the cultural and political history of the mid-20th century even as it grippingly relates the adventures of a few men and women -- Pankaj Mishra Love, war, politics, psychoanalysis, poetry, Calcutta and, especially, the Himalayas - Deborah Baker's meticulously researched account of India and Britain in the forties reads like the very best of novels. -- Siddhartha Deb An enlightening and utterly compelling read... what really distinguishes the book is its brilliant characterisation and its structural agility. It reads like fiction. Anyone seeking only information will be disappointed. Non-fiction ought always to be this engaging -- John Keay * Literary Review * A refreshingly novel account... this is skilful work, showing ordinary individuals as they cope-or buckle-while great geopolitical events twist and shape their lives * Economist * A Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist takes readers on a journey through the Indian subcontinent at the closing of the British Empire... Seemingly covering disparate topics, Baker beautifully connects them all with an incisive, clear writing style and sharp descriptions of the terrain. A book for any readers curious about India after 1900 * Kirkus * Seemingly covering disparate topics, Baker beautifully connects them all with an incisive, clear writing style and sharp descriptions of the terrain. A book for any readers curious about India after 1900 * Booklist * Vivid... Baker tells her story as if it were fiction... The result is a book with the narrative sweep of an epic novel -- Peter Parker * The Oldie * Ambitious and entertaining... The history of Empire is seen here through a unique prism -- Jules Stewart * Geographical * Satisfying and elegant... The book's narrative style is inseparable from its conception of history: it illustrates the essential inwardness of historical experience, and its unexpected conjunctions and coincidences evoke the miscellaneous reality of ordinary life. More than once while reading The Last Englishmen I found myself thinking of Stendhal's account of the Battle of Waterloo from Fabrice's marginal perspective, in The Charterhouse of Parma, and of Virginia Woolf's portrait of a nation on the brink of war, without mentioning it, in an English country house in Between the Acts -- Edward Mendelson * Book Post * Satisfying and elegant... The book's narrative style is inseparable from its conception of history: it illustrates the essential inwardness of historical experience, and its unexpected conjunctions and coincidences evoke the miscellaneous reality of ordinary life. More than once while reading The Last Englishmen I found myself thinking of Stendhal's account of the Battle of Waterloo from Fabrice's marginal perspective, in The Charterhouse of Parma, and of Virginia Woolf's portrait of a nation on the brink of war, without mentioning it, in an English country house in Between the Acts -- Edward Mendelson * Book Post * Skilfully constructed... The Last Englishmen... [is] a real achievement * Times Literary Supplement * Baker is able to inhabit characters from both [India and England], not merely as political entities...but as confused and deluded human beings, crashing into one another with all the dissatisfaction and self-doubt that membership in your and my species entails. The result is a book that offers not only the historical facts, but also a convincing three-dimensional experience of the withering of European ambitions in Asia. * South East Asia Review *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 162 mm
Thickness: 34 mm
Weight
645 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-7011-8894-8 (9780701188948)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Deborah Baker is the author of Making a Farm, In Extremis, which was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, A Blue Hand and The Convert, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. She lives in India and New York.