"My spirits were instantly lifted when I saw the glorious Cathedral and felt much happier" TNH Smith Pearse, Saint Omer 1917 Saint-Omer, an attractive ville fortifié in northern France has a British thread that weaves through each century. It was a caché for Saint Thomas Becket in 1165. It grew powerful as an English staple town in 1314. It had great religious and intellectual clout as home to the English Jesuits, fleeing the Reformation. It fell due to French Revolution. Napoleon based his troops here in his invasion plans of England in 1803. It was a central hub for the British Expeditionary Force during the start of WW1. It is home to the RAF and was the starting point for D.Bader's bid for freedom in 1941. "Written with huge enthusiasm and terrific research, it's an essential read for those interested in local history and travel in France." Tim Donovan, international property consultant and bon viveur

In Religion, Toleration, and British Writing, 1790–1830, Mark Canuel examines the way that Romantic poets, novelists and political writers criticized the traditional grounding of British political unity in religious conformity. Canuel shows how a wide range of writers including Jeremy Bentham, Ann Radcliffe, Maria Edgeworth and Lord Byron not only undermined the validity of religion in the British state, but also imagined a new, tolerant and more organized mode of social inclusion. To argue against the authority of religion, Canuel claims, was to argue for a thoroughly revised form of tolerant yet highly organized government, in other words, a mode of political authority that provided unprecedented levels of inclusion and protection. Canuel argues that these writers saw their works as political and literary commentaries on the extent and limits of religious toleration. His study throws light on political history as well as the literature of the Romantic period.

This book argues that in order to understand nationalisms, we need a clearer understanding of the types of cultural myths, symbols, and traditions that legitimate them. Myths of origin and election, memories of a greater and purer past, and narratives of persecution and mission are required for the production and maintenance of powerful national sentiments. Through an investigation of how early modern Catholics and Protestants reimagined, reinterpreted, and rewrote the lives of the founder-saints who spread Christianity in England, this book offers a theoretical framework for the study of origin narratives. Analyzing the discursive construction of time and place, the invocation of forces beyond the human to naturalize and authorize, and the role of visual and ritual culture in fabrications of the past, this book provides a case study for how to approach claims about founding figures. Serving as a timely example of the dependence of national identity on key religious resources, Griffin shows how origin narratives – particularly the founding figures that anchor them – function as uniquely powerful rhetorical tools for the cultural production of regional and national identity.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1859.