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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.
The presence of these values, Deane contends, is not a curiosity but part of a vital and discernible tradition of modern neo-Augustanism that has been previously overlooked. By tracing these writers' common interest in Horace, John Dryden, and Samuel Johnson, he uncovers important links between seemingly diverse modern poets. Deane challenges the whole interpretation of literary modernism, which has traditionally linked the modern poets to the Romantics and seen both as anti-Augustan. Deane concludes that these modern poets share a ready and pragmatic acceptance of linear time, within which all acts of artistic and social creativity must take place - a crucial factor in both the form and substance of their writings. That art, language, and society are inseparable under such conditions was a bracing thought for the young Auden, but a potentially disturbing one for more recent poets.