‘Continental people have sex lives; the English have hot-water bottles.” So observed Hungarian journalist George Mikes in How to Be an Alien (1946), one of the finest examples of a tradition in which foreigners explain Britain to itself. From Voltaire to VS Naipaul, outsiders have often illuminated national peculiarities, revealing contradictions so embedded in British life that they pass unnoticed. Helene von Bismarck’s Fantastic Kingdom is the latest contribution to this genre.
Von Bismarck, a distant relative by marriage of the Iron Chancellor, seems ideally placed for the task. The name alone gives her project a certain piquancy; there is something almost Pynchonesque about a German historian with that name attempting to decipher Britain for the British. Raised across Europe as the daughter of a diplomat, educated at the same Brussels school attended by Boris Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen, and a frequent visitor to the UK for two decades, she possesses the combination of distance and familiarity that can produce genuine insight. Her grand theme is that Britain is a “bewildering, complex, and wildly contradictory place”: a monarchy and a liberal democracy; a state of four nations; hostile to immigration yet remarkably pluralistic; obsessed with hierarchy yet strikingly informal. These tensions provide the book’s organising principle.
The snag is that, while Von Bismarck repeatedly emphasises her foreignness, she often writes like an insider. The promise of a stranger’s-eye view gives way to something closer to Westminster conventional wisdom. To be sure, Von Bismarck excels at identifying the paradoxes and incongruities that litter British public life. She highlights Britain’s simultaneous reverence for tradition and selective amnesia about history, the oddity of a supposedly status-conscious society in which everyone is on first-name terms, and the spectacle of Rory Stewart’s appeal for political seriousness being delivered from a circus tent. She also notes the irony of Boris Johnson championing Ukraine’s European future after leading Britain out of the EU.
Yet these astute observations are overshadowed by the book’s fixation on Brexit. The standard-issue continental view – of an admirable country led astray by populism and provincialism – is rehearsed throughout. The result is a curious time warp. Von Bismarck’s Britain appears frozen in a pre-pandemic intellectual landscape, perpetually condemned to relive the referendum and its aftermath.
More disappointing is Von Bismarck’s reluctance to pursue her own insights to their logical conclusions. When genuinely contentious issues arise, she retreats into caution. Discussing Scottish independence, she avoids weighing whether the costs of breaking up the union might be justified. Encountering Suella Braverman’s splenetic rhetoric on immigration, she informs us that the former home secretary’s personal motivations are “outside the scope of this book”.
This reserve is striking. Von Bismarck is neither a diplomat nor a civil servant, yet she writes as though Anglo-German relations depended upon her discretion. The reason may lie in the book’s intended audience. Von Bismarck explicitly tells us that she is writing for Britons. Even so, she feels compelled to explain that the country is “located by the sea”, that Scotland contains many supporters of independence, and that shadow ministers scrutinise government departments. Large sections read less like illuminating reflections on a contrary country than civics lessons for invading Daleks.
This is especially frustrating because Von Bismarck is well placed to offer comparisons that might have enriched the book: between Britain’s unwritten constitution and Germany’s legalism, British pragmatism and continental ambition, or Anglican ambiguity and German earnestness. Instead, she spends much of her time explaining systems her readers likely already understand.
Ultimately, what Fantastic Kingdom lacks is judgment. Britain is hardly short of books attempting to explain itself, and readers seeking a deeper analysis may find more rewarding alternatives. Brian Harrison’s recently published Yesterday, for example, covers much of this ground with greater precision and considerably more panache.
One closes the book with the sense that Von Bismarck knows more than she is willing to say – and wishing for more of the sharp, memorable insights that made George Mikes’s insider-outsider’s view so enduring.
• Fantastic Kingdom: A Stranger’s Notes on a Contrary Country by Helene von Bismarck is published by John Murray (£25). To support the Guardian order your copy at gurdianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
