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‘Csailors live a sex life; The English have hot water bottles.” He also said the Hungarian journalist George Mikes in the book How to Be an Alien (1946), one of the best examples of the tradition in which foreigners describe themselves to Britain. From Voltaire to VS Naipaul, outsiders often shed light on the country’s strangeness, exposing the contradictions so embedded in British life that they go unnoticed. Helene von Bismarck’s Fantastic Kingdom is a major contributor to this genre.
Von Bismarck, a distant relative by marriage to the Iron Chancellor, seems ready for the job. The name alone gives his project a certain piquancy; there is something Pynchonesque about a German historian of that name trying to describe Britain as British. Brought up across Europe as a diplomat’s daughter, educated at the same Brussels school that Boris Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen attended, and a regular visitor to the UK for two decades, she has the distance and familiarity that can make real sense. His main theme is that Britain is a “strange, complex, and deeply contradictory place”: monarchy and liberal democracy; the world of four countries; anti-immigration but impressive numbers; obsessed with leadership but unsteady. This argument provides the guiding principle of this book.
The catch is that, while Von Bismarck repeatedly emphasizes the unusual, he often writes as an insider. The promise of a foreigner’s eye offers the closest approach to Westminster’s conventional wisdom. To be honest, Von Bismarck was able to identify the paradoxes and mistakes that were destroying the British people’s lives. They also show Britain’s simultaneous respect for tradition and historic choice, the oddity of a group that is known to be predictable in how everyone is named, and the display of Rory Stewart’s appeal for political attention from the sports camp. He also sees the regret of Boris Johnson promoting Ukraine’s future in Europe after leading Britain to leave the EU.
Yet these insightful observations are overshadowed by the book’s fixation on Brexit. The view of global issues – of a fascinating world misled by populism and provincialism – is repeated throughout. The result is an amazing time. Britain’s Von Bismarck appears frozen in the pre-pandemic intellectual space, perpetually opposed to repeating the referendum and its results.
The most disappointing thing is that Von Bismarck did not want to follow his ideas to their logical consequences. When real conflicts arise, he avoids caution. When discussing Scottish independence, he avoids assessing whether the costs of a deal would be reasonable. Faced with Suella Braverman’s comments about immigration, she tells us that the former home secretary’s experience is “out of the book”.
This storage space is amazing. Von Bismarck is neither a diplomat nor a civil servant, yet he writes as if Anglo-German relations depended on his wisdom. The reason may be in the people for whom this book is written. Von Bismarck clearly tells us that he is writing to the Britons. Despite this, he feels compelled to explain that the country is “on the brink”, that Scotland has many independent supporters, and that shadow ministers scrutinize government departments. The main episodes read less as an exploration of a different world than a social study of the invading Daleks.
This is very disappointing because Von Bismarck is ready to provide comparisons that would have enriched the book: between the unwritten laws of Britain and German laws, British pragmatism and continental ambition, or Anglican ambiguity and German commitment. Instead, he spends most of his time explaining practices that his readers already understand.
Ultimately, what the Good Kingdom lacks is judgment. Britain is not limited to books that try to explain themselves, and readers who want to explore in depth can find other useful options. Brian Harrison, for example, who was recently published yesterday, explains a lot of this with great accuracy and complexity.
One closes the book with the feeling that Von Bismarck knew more than he would like to say – and longing for the sharp, memorable insights that made George Mikes’ foreign mind endure.
