Albion (21 page)

(Top Left) “Carpet” page, from the Lindisfarne Gospel; (right) King David with musicians. The art of manuscript illumination is the glory of the Anglo-Saxon period, while the geometric intricacy of its lines, borders, and patterns is also exemplified by such artefacts as the shoulder clasp found in the Sutton Hoo burial site (below).

(
Left
) Anglo-Saxon attitudes: King Edgar, illuminated manuscript of the tenth century; and

(
below
) “Driven by the Spirit into Wilderness,” panel from the twentieth-century Christ in the Wilderness series by Stanley Spencer.

(
Below
left
) “Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.” Lewis Carroll’s lyric
Jabberwocky
(
Through
the Looking-Glass
) is a parody of Old English verse.

(
Below
right
) Sir Ian McKellen in the 2001 film of
Lord of the Rings
. J. R. R. Tolkien’s imagination was first stirred by the strange beauty of “Ancient English” poetry.

(
Above
) “Event on the Downs” by Paul Nash. “There is a path that leads through English literature.”

(
Below
) “Seascape Study with Rainclouds” by John Constable. “English fiction is drenched in rain.”

The nave of Durham Cathedral. “The rulers of Britain knew that there was power in stone.”

“The Wilton Diptych”: an example of typically English “mystical dreaminess of mood.”

“Canterbury Tales”: illuminated initial, with a portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer, “the worshipful father” of “our englissh.”

In medieval times, the English were noted for their piety: St. Leonard with crozier and manacles, St. Agnes or St. Catherine with sword and book, two saints, from a screen in St. John’s Maddermarket, Norwich.

An insular art: the English love of the miniature. Nicholas Hilliard’s portrait of Elizabeth I (left) measures two inches by one and seven-eighths of an inch, while in Richard Dadd’s visionary painting, “The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke” (right), the little figures are grouped among hazel nuts.

The English visionary sensibility: William Blake and Samuel Palmer were, in their different ways, intent upon discovering the spiritual lineaments of the world. (
Facing page
) “Daniel Delivered out of Many Waters” by Blake and (
left
) “A Hilly Scene” by Palmer.