Anglomania

Ian Buruma's wonderful book on Europe's fascination with England takes its title from a remark made by Voltaire in the mid-18th century: wasn't it possible for England's love of law and liberty to be planted, like the seeds of coconut trees, throughout Europe? Voltaire was the ultimate Anglophile: liberal, humorous, enlightened and ultimately humane, not unlike Buruma himself, whose delightful Voltaire's Coconuts weaves a compelling story, from Voltaire onward, of the ways in which European exiles and emigrés have fallen under the spell of the intangible mix of snobbery, liberalism, xenophobia and tolerance which make up what it means to be English.

Buruma's roll call of Anglophiles is impressive. Wonderful sections on Voltaire are followed by chapters on Goethe's Bardolatry, a marvellously vivid account of frustrated revolutionary exiles in Victorian London (including Marx and Mazzini), Theodor van Herzl's vision of a Jewish state based on his admiration of the English aristocracy. The book concludes with sketches of two of the most influential Anglophiles of 20th-century English culture: Nikolaus Pevsner and Isaiah Berlin. But as well as being an elegant and witty cultural history of European "Anglomania", Voltaire's Coconuts never loses sight of the darker side of national belonging, as Buruma interweaves his own complex family history into his narrative, as well as some subtle and perceptive accounts of the state of the nation as Buruma views it from the office of The Spectator and the Conservative Party Conference in post-Thatcherite Britain. A marvellous book about belonging and Englishness: witty, erudite, subtle and above all humane. --Jerry Brotton