Abstract
In 1995, a 55-year-old popular music sensation received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II for his services to charitable institutions, securing his role as a much-loved national treasure in the British imagination.1 That he should receive the ultimate recognition of service to the country was hardly surprising: he had been a household name since the 1950s, producing an impressive string of hit singles and exhibiting both a style and an attraction that seem to defy both generational change and the whims of fashion. This self-proclaimed religious philanthropist is also one of the most successful musical performers in British history. His single sales have been phenomenal with 33 of them selling over a million copies, and a national survey in 2004 found that he had sold nearly 21 million records in his career, eclipsing The Beatles who come second, and Elvis Presley who is in third place.2 As Sir Cliff Richard posed for photographs outside Buckingham Palace after the event with his three sisters, Donna, Joan and Jacqui, his journey to a distinguished place in the British establishment seemed complete.
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Notes
See K. J. Connelly (1998), ‘Sir Cliff Richard and British Pop Musicals’, Journal of Popular Film and Television Vol. 25, No. 4: 146. Connelly claims that Richard was knighted in 1996. The announcement was made on 16 June 1995 while the actual ceremony at Buckingham Palace took place on 25 October 1995. See The Guardian, 17 June 1995, p. 1 and
Steve Turner (2005), Cliff Richard: The Biography (Oxford: Lion Hudson), p. 304.
See P. Gambaccini et al. (eds) (1978), The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles (London: Guinness Superlatives), p. 114.
See W. Holden (1999), ‘Why Cliff Richard Is Still On Top’, New Statesman Vol. 128, No. 4465: 17.
See D. Bradley (1992), Understanding Rock’n’Roll: Popular Music in Britain, 1955–1964 (Birmingham: Open University Press).
Engelbert Humperdinck and Katie Wright (2004), Engelbert: What’s in a Name (London: Virgin) and Turner, Cliff Richard. Since this essay was written, Cliff Richard has published his autobiography My Life, My Way (London: Vox, 2008). His birth and early life in India are briefly mentioned on pages 5 and 6, including the following: We came to England in 1948 when the British all flooded back home after India won its independence. My parents were British, but both of them had been born abroad and neither of them had ever been to England, so they had no “home” to go to. My father was born in Burma, and my mother, Dorothy Dazely, in India, which is where they met. (p. 6).
See G. Whitlock (2007), Soft Weapons: Autobiography in Transit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 10–11, 20.
See K. McKenzie (2004), Scandal in the Colonies: Sydney and Cape Town, 1820–1850 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press), p. 4.
See M. Sinha (2001), ‘Britishness, Clubbability and the Colonial Public Sphere: The Genealogy of an Imperial Institution’, Journal of British Studies Vol. 40, No.4: 489–521.
See E. Buettner (2004), Empire Families: Britons in Late Imperial India (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 12–24, 74–79;
and L. Caplan (2003), Children of Colonialism: Anglo-Indians in a Postcolonial World, (London: Berg), p. 78.
See H. Gidney (1934), ‘The Future of the Anglo-Indian Community’, Journal of the East India Association Vol. XXV, No. 1: 27–42.
See E. Abel (1988), The Anglo-Indian Community: Survival in India (Delhi: Chanakya Publications), p. 6.
A. Blunt (2005), Domicile and Diaspora: Anglo-Indian Women and the Spatial Politics of Home (Oxford: Blackwell), p. 50;
and A. Blunt (2002), ‘“Land of Our Mothers”: Home, Identity and Nationality for Anglo-Indians in British India’, History Workshop Journal No. 54: 49–72.
See N. King (2000), Memory, Narrative, Identity: Remembering the Self (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), p. 3.
See S. Sen (2001), ‘Colonial Aversions and Domestic Desires: Blood, Race, Sex and the Decline of Intimacy in Early British India’, South Asia XXIV: 35–45.
On the role of ‘strategic remembering’ in the self-fashioning of autobiography, see G. Whitlock (2002), ‘Strategic Remembering: Fabricating Local Subjects’, in R. Dalziell (ed.), Selves Crossing Cultures: Autobiography and Globalisation (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing), p. 172.
See C. Hawes (1996), Poor Relations: The Making of a Eurasian Community in British India; 1773–1833 (Richmond: Curzon), p. 85.
See C. Dover (1937), Half-Caste (London: Martin Secker and Warburg Ltd.).
See S. Morgan (1987), My Place (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press).
See K. E. Wallace (ed.) (1930), The Eurasian Problem Constructively Approached (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Co.), p. 30.
See F. Anthony (1969), Britain’s Betrayal in India: The Story of the Anglo-Indian Community (Bombay: Allied Publishers), p. ii.
See A. Carton (2007), ‘Historicising Hybridity and the Politics of Location: Three Early Colonial Indian Narratives’, Journal of Intercultural Studies Vol. 28, No. 1: 143–155.
See A. Woollacott (1997), ‘“All This Is the Empire I Told Myself”: Australian Women’s Voyages “Home” and the Articulation of Colonial Whiteness’, American Historical Review Vol. 102, No. 4: 1003–1029.
A. Nandy (1983), The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism (Delhi: Oxford University Press), p. 7.
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© 2010 Adrian Carton
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Carton, A. (2010). Imperial Melodies: Globalizing the Lives of Cliff Richard and Engelbert Humperdinck. In: Deacon, D., Russell, P., Woollacott, A. (eds) Transnational Lives. The Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230277472_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230277472_7
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