The execution of William Tyndale.
Social media posts to the effect that "Britain has no culture" are common. There’s nothing remarkable about that - it's part of the pervasive attempt to rewrite British history and culture that has been going on for decades. "No culture" is a provocation rather than a substantive argument, and whilst it’s clearly untrue, it can be hard to say why.
A snappy reply is hard for a couple of obvious reasons: any national culture - however you want to define it - is necessarily huge; most of it is understood tacitly or implicitly, and doesn't need to be made it explicit most of the time; and not everyone is used to expressing it in words.
It's also hard because it's been a long time since the mainstream expressed a convincing account of our culture. This is not a coincidence. The whole point of the attempt to rewrite history is to ensure that an easily understood and expressible account is not available. Prior to the year 2000, roughly, there were public intellectuals and commentators who articulated a solid defence of our culture, however conventional. The current virtue-signal commentariat display the relics of a flourishing culture with no way to produce the substance.
The government, the news media, the cultural industries and the church are not going to do it. At best, there are anodyne "defences" from mainstream cultural conservatives, along the lines of "our great cultural inheritance is a remarkable legacy, and we should be proud of it, and stand up for it." To say "we benefit from a majestic linguistic inheritance" is something from a National Trust gift shop, and is as useful, day-to-day, as pointing out that England won the World Cup in 1966. It is probably realistic to accept that this is the most inspiring account of Britain's culture they intend to come up with.
A comprehensive account of the actual virtues of Britain's culture, of everything distinctive and useful, would be unwieldy. Fortunately that isn't needed. Indicating few key aspects, like the English language, is probably enough to point out the vast beleaguered implicit knowledge.
The development of modern English is dominated two huge literary developments of Tudor England: the English Bible, and the Shakespeare plays (1) . These were establishment projects, filtered through what the state allowed to be said, and are shot through with the political conflicts of their time. They were sustained by official sanction. But they are also sustained into our time by their quality of language, and by popular love.
The dramatic tale of William Tyndale is central to the translations of the Bible into English. He was the scholar and linguist who, in the early 1500s, made the first English translation from the original Greek, rather than Latin translations. Tyndall defied the state in translating the Bible. He had been refused permission to translate by the authorities, so lived and worked abroad, often as a fugitive. His translation was banned and burned, as was anyone smuggling them into England. He was executed for it: in recognition of his standing as a scholar, he was strangled before his corpse was burned.
Tyndale's translation allowed ordinary people to read the scripture by which they were supposedly governed, and was hugely popular. Henry VIII eventually forbade labourers and non-gentlewomen to read the Bible in English. In time, however, the vernacular bible became part of the state's battle with the Catholic world and the establishment of the Anglican Church. Tyndales' translation, completed by Myles Coverdale, provided much of the material for the Geneva Bible of Elizabeth's reign, and in turn for James’ authorised version.
Much of the lasting poetry of the the King James Version comes from Tyndale:
"Tyndale would have none of the efforts to "elevate" English by Latinising it.... writing to be understood by "the boy that driveth the plough" he used everyday words and proverbs... his lively style, using short, vivid phrases and simple words in relatively free translation made the Bible a native work, and consecrated the language of the ordinary people. This shaped what standard English turned out to be." (2)
The poetry of Thomas Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer, the other ubiquitous religious book of the time, is in a similar style:
"Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower; he flieth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. In the midst of life, we are in death."
These books are from a time before scientific explanation. They are both spare and rich, and have a deeply felt nobility and seriousness. They allowed people articulate their moral lives when events demanded something more than everyday language. They set much of the content of the English moral ideal.
The Shakespeare plays were written four hundred years ago. It is impossible to overstate their influence on the language, and the idea of England as a nation. Education is against the plays now, and their concerns, like life at court, honour in battle, and courtly love, are not today's concerns. That said, their political world is full of flesh and blood agency, rather than today's deepfakes; even today the vivid language will live with anyone who engages with it.
"Shakespeare's presentation of recent history is commonly dismissed as 'Tudor propaganda'... But most of Shakespeare's history is the opposite of propaganda: always ambivalent, often amoral, rarely idealised, often derisive, sometimes cynical, with few heroes but many villans and inadequates, much futility, no euphamism, little sign of the benign workings of Providence, no edifying message, no 'grand narrative', and at best a provisional happy ending.
He presents England's history as bound up with monarchs, and this has been described as 'politically deferential'. But his vision also includes a rural and popular England. His portrayal of monarchy, is far from reverential or idealised. Showing any monarch on stage in even slightly controversial circumstances was taboo over much of Europe as late as the nineteenth century; but Shakespeare not only lets light in on majesty but subjects it to a withering glare, showing kings deposed, humiliated and killed. The plays are overwhelmingly political: the conflicts and decisions of people acting out of ambition, lust, pride, fear, revenge, jealousy - and occasionally loyalty, faith or honour ("a word", mocks Falstaff). Their efforts and aims are often futile, absurd and meaningless. Even the most just or glorious war brings waste, corruption, cruelty and death "stinking and fly-blown". His kings and queens are as human as his peasants - selfish, cruel, doubting, incapable, lecherous, perfidious but rarely very chivalous, and sacred only by the grace of their subjects. Not surprisingly, there could be political trouble, and Elizabeth I remarked balefully after one performance, "I am Richard II, know you not that?"
Shakespeare rarely preaches. His characters speak in many voices. Even his monsters have moments of humanity, courage or pathos. The audience decides. For a nation that was already politically aware and claiming the right to judge its rulers, this was pushing the door right open. Shakespeare's own sympathies, so far as they are displayed, seem to be for peace, harmony and moderation, with England as a carefully tended garden - a task requiring many hands, and never finished." (3)
Then as now, mass entertainment promoted the approved message. But no matter how tightly controlled its original purpose, any successful language will develop a life of its own. If it is good, people will take from it what they want. Descriptive and explanatory power, and emotional and moral force, are the material from which anyone can make their own account of the world we find ourselves in:
"A hymn of praise in gratitude for the joys and consolations and general usefulness of art might run as follows: Art is informative and entertaining; it condenses and clarifies the world, directing attention on particular things. This intense showing, this bearing witness, of which it is capable is detested by tyrants who alway persecute or demoralise their artists. Art illuminates accident and contingency and the general muddle of life, the limitations of time and the discursive intellect, so as to enable us to survey complex or horrible things that would otherwise appal us. It creates an authoritative public human world, a treasury of past experience, it preserves the past. Art makes places and opens spaces for reflection, it is a defence against materialism and against pseudo-intellectual attitudes to life. It calms and invigorates, it gives energy by unifying, possibly by purifying, our feelings. In enjoying great art we experience a clarification and concentration and perfection of our own consciousness. Emotion and intellect are unified into a limited whole. In this sense art also creates its client; it inspires intuitions of ideal formal and symbolic unity which enables us to co-operate with the artist and to be, as we enjoy the work, artists ourselves. The art object conveys, in the most accessible and, for many the only available form, the idea of a transcendent perfection. Great art inspires because it is separate, it is for nothing, it is for itself. It is an image of virtue. Its condensed, clarified presentation enables us to look without sin upon a sinful world." (4)
In practice, skilled language is at the core of human flourishing, whether interpersonal relationships, politics, legislation, art, science - almost everything. It is still available to anyone minded to acquire it.
"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we're not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak,' he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. 'Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?" (5)