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National Identities and Travel in Victorian Britain pp 46–82Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Landscape and Climate

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Part of the book series: Studies in Modern History ((SMH))

Abstract

In Kazuo Ishiguro’s Booker prize-winning novel The Remains of the Day, the English landscape and English butler are intimately linked. Darlington Hall’s butler, Stevens, explains the connection as he relaxes in a Salisbury guesthouse after a day’s drive through the West Country. The expedition took him near the Berkshire border where he climbed a steep but beckoning footpath for a hill-top view of the surrounding countryside. From that elevated position where a light breeze caressed his face, Stevens felt that the English landscape was ‘the most deeply satisfying in the world’. It possessed, he thought, a quality found in no other national landscape — the quality of greatness. By ‘great’ Stevens did not mean dramatic or spectacular. Quite the contrary. The beauty of the English landscape was great, in Stevens’s view, because of its ‘calmness’ and ‘sense of restraint’. At this point, Stevens’s thoughts shifted from the rolling countryside to the reserved English butler.

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Notes

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois, USA

    Marjorie Morgan (Associate Professor of History)

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  1. Marjorie Morgan
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© 2001 Marjorie Morgan

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Morgan, M. (2001). Landscape and Climate. In: National Identities and Travel in Victorian Britain. Studies in Modern History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230512153_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230512153_3

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-40440-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-0-230-51215-3

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

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