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God’s other Englishman
SYLVIA HIKINS revisits the visionary world of Blake in a handsome book that sets him alongside his European contemporaries
NATIONALISM AND RACISM: (Left) Distress of the Fatherland (Not des Vaterlandes), Philipp Otto Runge, 1809; (Middle) Albion and the Fates, William Blake, 1804-1820; (Right) Flagellation of a Female Samboe Slave, William Blake, 1793 [Hamburger Kunsthalle/Private Collection/British Museum]

William Blake’s Universe
David Birdman and Esther Chadwick
Philip Wilson, £35


 

WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827) is possibly best known as the creator of England’s unofficial national anthem. When I was a kid, my mother used to take me with her to the local Co-op Women’s Guild, and at the start of every meeting we would heartily sing “Jerusalem.”

England’s green and pleasant land was written in the context of a turbulent age of political upheaval where the American, French, and Haitian revolutions combined with the growth of modern capitalism. Unsurprisingly, both dissenting and visionary art flourished across Europe. 

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