We’re delighted to welcome Duncan Hamilton to our March meeting.

We live in a world of friction between the nations of the United Kingdom. Resurgent Scotland, resilient Wales and confident Northern Ireland jostle with long-dominant England for an equal voice on Britain’s national stage. From Scotland’s independence referendum to Brexit, the 2010s and 2020s have ushered in a period of flux for the United Kingdom, but questions about the relationship between national cultures and the idea of ‘Britishness’ are not unique to our time. In asking ourselves what Britishness now means – in doing so, asking the same of Englishness, Scottishness, Welshness and Irishness – we must turn to voices from history who have also sought an answer to that vital question. Elizabeth Gaskell is one such voice.

Britain’s four national cultures repeatedly surface throughout Gaskell’s body of work. From the Scottish intellectual Mr. Gibson in Wives and Daughters, to the coarse Irish blacklegs of North and South, to depictions of a stoic and mysterious Wales in both Ruth and her short fiction. Gaskell’s fascination with the cultural diversity of the British Isles dominates her literature. So too does her native Englishness come under scrutiny – from satirising an English pretension to gentility in Cranford to exploring England’s heterogeneity in the aptly-titled North and South. This talk explores all four national cultures of the United Kingdom, examining Gaskell’s characterisation of each and their interactions within her literature, to understand Gaskell’s perspective on British identity and how it relates to our interpretation of the concept today.

Duncan Hamilton is a third-year PhD student at the University of Manchester and regular volunteer at Elizabeth Gaskell’s House. He is currently researching literature produced by the Chartist movement with a particular focus on Chartism’s leading working-class poet, Thomas Cooper. He is also interested in historiography and the efforts of Chartist writers to construct an alternative English history to the dominant narrative of the period. He has a passion for genealogy and his Victorian ancestry includes migrants from Ireland, Chartists from Scotland and powerloom weavers from Manchester.

Everyone is most welcome to come along, members and non-members alike. Doors open at 1pm (feel free to bring a packed lunch) and the talk will begin at 1.30pm.

Tickets are £5 for members, £6 for non-members. Simply pay on the door, or use the link below –  (no booking fee).