Enoch Powell speech on England. Once or twice at most in a lifetime a man ought to be allowed, as you have done me the honour to allow me tonight, to propose this toast. Introspection for a nation, as for an individual, is an unhealthy attitude unless it be sparingly practised; but from time to time and Englishman among other Englishmen may without harm, and even with advantage, seek to express I na spoken words just cause to praise his country. There was a saying, not heart today so often as formerly, “What do they know of England who only England knows?” It is a saying which dates. It has a period aroma, like Kipling’s Recessional, or the state rooms at Osborne. The period is that which the historian Sir John Seely, in a now almost forgotten at once immensely popular book, called “The Expansion of England”. In that incredible phase, which came upon the English unawares, as all true greatness comes unawares upon a nation, the power and influence of England expanded with the force and speed of an explosion. The strange & brief juncture of deep and invincible seapower with industrial potential brought the islands and the continents under the influence, I almost said under the spell, of England born and it was the Englishman who carried with him to the Rockies or the North-west Frontier, to the Australian deserts or the African lakes, “the thoughts of England given”, who seemed to himself and to a great part of his countrymen at home to be the typical Englishman with the truest perspective of England.
St. George's Day - Enoch Powell
St. George's Day - Enoch Powell
St. George's Day - Enoch Powell
Enoch Powell speech on England. Once or twice at most in a lifetime a man ought to be allowed, as you have done me the honour to allow me tonight, to propose this toast. Introspection for a nation, as for an individual, is an unhealthy attitude unless it be sparingly practised; but from time to time and Englishman among other Englishmen may without harm, and even with advantage, seek to express I na spoken words just cause to praise his country. There was a saying, not heart today so often as formerly, “What do they know of England who only England knows?” It is a saying which dates. It has a period aroma, like Kipling’s Recessional, or the state rooms at Osborne. The period is that which the historian Sir John Seely, in a now almost forgotten at once immensely popular book, called “The Expansion of England”. In that incredible phase, which came upon the English unawares, as all true greatness comes unawares upon a nation, the power and influence of England expanded with the force and speed of an explosion. The strange & brief juncture of deep and invincible seapower with industrial potential brought the islands and the continents under the influence, I almost said under the spell, of England born and it was the Englishman who carried with him to the Rockies or the North-west Frontier, to the Australian deserts or the African lakes, “the thoughts of England given”, who seemed to himself and to a great part of his countrymen at home to be the typical Englishman with the truest perspective of England.