caa a22 4500 388018011 CHVBK 20180307124916.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130e199804 xx s 000 0 eng 10.1086/386158 doi S0021937100023492 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.1086/386158 Heyck Thomas William Myths and Meanings of Intellectuals in Twentieth-Century British National Identity [Elektronische Daten] [Thomas William Heyck] As Stefan Collini remarks in a recent paper comparing twentieth-century French and British intellectuals, the sense that Britain has had no intellectuals has been a significant element in British national identity. Collini rightly observes, "Any discussion in contemporary Britain of the topic of ‘intellectuals' is sooner or later touched by the cliché that the reality of the phenomenon, like the origins of the term, is located in Continental Europe, and that British society, whether for reasons of history, culture or national psychology, is marked by the absence of ‘intellectuals.'” One might add that a closely related assumption has been equally significant: namely, that while the British may have had some intellectuals, they have paid little attention to them. As Denis Brogan once said, in a typical observation on British culture, "We British don't take our intellectuals too seriously.” The purpose of this article is to suggest an explanation for this feature of British national identity. As the recent literature on national identity tells us, a society's sense of national characteristics is culturally constructed; thus we should be skeptical about any assertions concerning either the absence of intellectuals or the lack of influence by intellectuals in British culture. Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1998 The Journal of British Studies Cambridge University Press 37/2(1998-04), 192-221 0021-9371 37:2<192 1998 37 JBR https://doi.org/10.1086/386158 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1086/386158 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Heyck Thomas William NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- The Journal of British Studies Cambridge University Press 37/2(1998-04), 192-221 0021-9371 37:2<192 1998 37 JBR CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge