Long Live the English Gentleman

Praseeda Gopinath explores the intertwined discourses of gentlemanliness and imperialism across the twentieth century. As the emblem of Englishness, the gentleman loses its authority as the British Empire contracts, and reinvests itself as the symbol of a resurgent national culture of postwar England. While this narrative of decline and revival is persuasive, it also risks stabilizing the concepts of the "gentleman" and "Englishness."