Engel’s England by Matthew Engel - Leicestershire. "a county detached from its urban heart"

[davieG]

Leicester might not be the most gorgeous girl – but she is eminently loveable nonetheless

By Leicester Mercury  |  Posted: November 14, 2014

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  Young Asians getting to grips with English, at a school in Leicester in the early 70s.

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  Tally-ho: The Quorn Hunt in Hoby, picture taken in 2001, before the hunting ban.

So this was the premise: the 39 counties of England, one capital, one man – Matthew Engel – with a notebook. The result is a new book, Engel’s England, an elegantly-written compendium of England today, writes Lee Marlow.

It took three years, says Matthew, the former editor of Wisden and one-time Guardian feature writer, who now works for the Financial Times (“I must be the least fiscally aware columnist on the FT,” he says).

Three years of trains, travelling, hotel beds, criss-crossing the country to find out what makes it tick.

And the answer? Well, it depends where you are. The country dances to a different beat, depending on where you are. Matthew was worried it might be a bit depressing, an elegy to the fading fortune of a once great nation.

It was nothing of the sort.

“It’s easy to get depressed about England – so ill-used, so wet and so grey,” he says. “And yet there was something I believed when I set out that I believe even more strongly now I have finalised: that this is the most beautiful and fascinating country on earth.”

Right in the middle – of the book and the country, chapter 22, next to Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire for some unexplained reason – is Leicestershire.

Matthew Engel knows a thing or two about Leicestershire. He spent his formative years in neighbouring Northamptonshire. Growing up, Leicester was like the glamorous older sister, he says. More attractive. Alluring. Always up to something more interesting, it seemed.

“Leicester always seemed to have a bit more going for it,” he says. “And then, when I started following cricket, this was in the late ’60s, early ’70s, Leicestershire were enjoying their most successful period. Ray Illingworth and Roger Tolchard and all of that. They always had a better football team, too.”

So when he turned up in Leicester for a week in 2013, he already knew what to expect. Or at least, he thought he did.

What he discovered was a county detached from its urban heart – a city demographic that had undergone one of the biggest changes of any city in England in the past 40 years, and a county that, in comparison, had hardly changed at all.

You find that in all sorts of places, all over the country; a busy, metropolitan heart and a slower-paced, more rural perimeter.

Leicester, one of the most congested cities in the country, was brimming with limping traffic. In the county, the B roads were full of horses, “ladies, mainly,” he says, “riding with the hauteur that can only be achieved by an English woman on horseback.’’

The separation between city and county is more pronounced in Leicestershire than anywhere else in England, he says.

There are a million people living in Leicestershire, a third of them in Leicester itself.

“The connection between the city and the county, still overwhelmingly white, was never very strong.

“The link has become ever more tenuous, especially since Leicester regained its old independence from the county council in 1997,” says Matthew. “Leicester has gone from a city that was more or less white, to a city that is now less than 50 per cent white – all in the space of one, two generations.”

It’s a huge change. Historians will look back at this period and see it as an enormously influential time in the city’s history.

But it has also lead to a chasm; a biography with a dual narrative – one city, one county, bound by geography and history, a hospital that serves both, a football and rugby team which continue to attract the support of people in both, but increasingly two different places with different attitudes and cultures.

Matthew Engel is quick to stress that, although he is a former Guardian feature writer, he is not stereotypically right-on.

“I am sceptical of the argument you hear from many liberals that immigration is always a good thing for communities and, if you question that then, somehow, that makes you racist,” he says. “That’s not true. There have been some problems in this country caused by immigration.”

That’s not the case in Leicester, he argues. The arrival, in the early 1970s, of families of mainly Gujarati immigrants, expelled by Uganda’s Idi Amin, not only saved them – it saved Leicester.

“I think there was a genuine humanitarian need for them arriving here and settling in Leicester,” he says.

They came here because they dealt with Leicester businessmen in the hosiery trade.

But word soon went round. Come to Leicester, the new arrivals said in letters home. It’s good here.

The city council paid for full page advertisements claiming the city was “full up”. The plan backfired. More immigrants arrived.

“These people came to Leicester with a purpose. They were in genuine political peril. They may have arrived with nothing – but they were determined people. They were entrepreneurial. Educated. They worked hard.

“They started to take over the nation’s newsagents and they kept them open much longer then their predecessors, elderly English couples in cardigans.”

In many ways, they were the kind of businessmen that left-leaning Labour politicians instinctively hate on principle – if they’re white, says Matthew. Here, after a bumpy start, they were embraced.

Today, Leicester is the poster child for modern British race relations. That’s down to the authorities who welcomed the new influx of migrants, the good-natured tolerance of its people – and the immigrants themselves.

“Leicester has prospered in a way that some towns and cities haven’t because the people who came here were better equipped to deal with the challenges than, perhaps, some Pakistani families, who were settling into the old northern mill towns.”

Matthew spent a week in Leicester.

The trick, he says, was to try to find the essence of a place, what’s unique or special about it, and turn that into something that’s interesting and free from cliche.

“And, also, to have enough time to see places that intrigued me – what is a place like Frisby-on-the-Wreake like? How does that church in Breedon on the Hill manage to survive when it looks like a good wind would topple it from its impressive perch?”

In Leicestershire, he chose immigration and hunting. Hmmmm, we say. If he was looking for something unique and cliche free, he didn’t seem to dig very deeply. He’s aware of the contradiction.

“But they’re interesting topics, and they do define the city and county,” he says. “I knew Leicestershire was well-known for its hunting, for example, but I wanted to find out why.”

Leicestershire – a county that boasts a fox as its county emblem, but also a place renowned for killing it – became synonymous with fox hunting by default, almost.

For centuries the bullocks of Britain grazed on the rich and spring grasslands of Leicestershire. In autumn, the bullocks were moved indoors, the next step of their plate-ward destiny.

“Which left the fields conveniently empty,” says Matthew, “and that’s how Leicestershire became fox county.

“Leicestershire was not as sniffy as its rival, Gloucestershire, but still inviting enough for metropolitan types to take homes in Market Harborough or Melton.”

In every place he visited, Matthew stopped off at the cathedral and lit a candle. The candle was for his son, Laurie, who died of cancer at the age of 13. The book is dedicated to him: “To Laurie and the past, to Vika (his daughter) and the future,” the dedication says.

Lighting a candle became a mission-long purpose, as if Laurie – a talented student and promising young writer – was with him on his travels. Laurie would have liked that, he says. It was a comforting thought.

“When something like this happens, you have to make a conscious decision to go forward. You need to find a sense of purpose.”

The book became a purpose, he says – “I felt obligated, in a way, to make sure I did these things because Laurie couldn’t,” – and stopping off at every cathedral and lighting a candle also became a ritual he was keen to continue.

The Engel family has raised more than £1 million for Birmingham Children’s Hospital in memory of Laurie.

Matthew was impressed with Leicester cathedral; a magnificent old building set in the most interesting part of the city.

“It drew me into the Richard III story, too,” he says. He was pleased – relieved, almost – that Leicester was allowed to keep the bones of the last Plantagenet King.

“It seemed like entirely the right thing to do.”

He likes Leicestershire, despite the rivalry, despite growing up in Northants and feeling ever-so-slightly peeved that there was more going on a bit further up the A6.

So what’s your favourite place in the whole of England?

“Ah,” he says. “I can’t say. I loved them all.

“I’ve been asked that question before – I feel like a mother asked to pick her favourite child. I love them all, all 39 of them, equally.”

You did say, in one part of the book, that Leicestershire’s countryside was “too dull for weekenders”. Dull? Really?

Matthew sounds a little bit sheepish.

“Oh. Did I really say dull? Hmmm, I’m not sure that’s what I meant. I think what I was trying to say was that Leicestershire is not the kind of place where people have chosen to buy weekend cottages. It’s not Suffolk. It’s not the Cotswolds.”

Right. He begins to sound fretful.

“I don’t think this is a bad thing,” he adds, swiftly. “I think many of these places have been changed, spoiled, in fact, by cottages occupied by weekend Londoners. Leicestershire, by and large, has not really had that. It has remained true to itself.

“I think I’ve come to love places like that the most.”

This is where, arguably, he should stop digging. He doesn’t. “I think, perhaps, Leicestershire is one of those places that is not obviously drop-dead gorgeous.”

Enough, man, I want to shout. You were doing fine. But Matthew is not finished.

“What I mean, I think, is that... well, the worst thing that could happen to Leicestershire, to England as whole, really, is that it becomes a kind of homogenised gloop.”

A what?

“A gloop. Where everything is nondescript and the same as everything else.

“Leicester has a distinctiveness. It doesn’t have to contend with tourists and outsiders ‘taking over’. That’s good.

“Look, if you’re from the East Midlands – and I am, that’s where I am from – you kind of feel annoyed when people put the place down all the time, don’t you think?”

I do. I thought, in a way, that’s what you were doing.

Nooo, nooo, noo, he says.

“What I’m saying is: The most gorgeous girl in the room may not be the most worthwhile, do you know?”

So are you now comparing us to some kind of 2am wallflower?

Noo, noo, noo, he says.

“Leicester might not be the most gorgeous girl – but she is eminently loveable nonetheless. Is that okay?”

I suppose so.

“Phew,” he says. “Have I managed to convince you that I love Leicestershire? I think I need a drink.”

Engel’s England by Matthew Engel is out now priced £20, published by Profile Books.

Read more: http://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/Leicester-gorgeous-girl-8211-eminently-loveable/story-24534358-detail/story.html#ixzz3J3JVJ672 
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[Alf Bentley]

Leicester might not be the most gorgeous girl – but she is eminently loveable nonetheless

By Leicester Mercury  |  Posted: November 14, 2014

 

So this was the premise: the 39 counties of England, one capital, one man – Matthew Engel – with a notebook. The result is a new book, Engel’s England, an elegantly-written compendium of England today, writes Lee Marlow.

It took three years, says Matthew, the former editor of Wisden and one-time Guardian feature writer, who now works for the Financial Times (“I must be the least fiscally aware columnist on the FT,” he says).

Three years of trains, travelling, hotel beds, criss-crossing the country to find out what makes it tick.

And the answer? Well, it depends where you are. The country dances to a different beat, depending on where you are. Matthew was worried it might be a bit depressing, an elegy to the fading fortune of a once great nation.

It was nothing of the sort.

“It’s easy to get depressed about England – so ill-used, so wet and so grey,” he says. “And yet there was something I believed when I set out that I believe even more strongly now I have finalised: that this is the most beautiful and fascinating country on earth.”

 

 

I really like the concept behind this book. No idea whether it's any good, but it sounds to have a lot of potential. Might buy this.

 

Here's the Amazon blurb for anyone interested:

 

"England, says Matthew Engel, is the most complicated place in the world. And, as he travels through each of the historic English counties, he discovers that's just the start of it. Every county is fascinating, the product of a millennium or more of history: still a unique slice of a nation that has not quite lost its ancient diversity.

He finds the well-dressers of Derbyshire and the pyromaniacs of Sussex; the Hindus and huntsmen of Leicestershire; the goddess-worshippers of Somerset. He tracks down the real Lancashire, hedonistic Essex, and the most mysterious house in Middlesex. In Durham he goes straight from choral evensong to the dog track. As he seeks out the essence of each county - from Yorkshire's broad acres to the microdot of Rutland - Engel always finds the unexpected .

Engel's England is a totally original look at a confused country: a guidebook for people who don't think they need a guidebook. It is always quirky, sometimes poignant and often extremely funny".