The fall and rise of the English upper class

<i>The fall and rise of the English upper class </i>explores the role traditionalist worldviews articulated by members of the historic upper-class have played in British society in the shadow of her imperial and economic decline in the twentieth century. Situating these traditionalist visions alongside Britain's post-Brexit fantasies of global economic resurgence and a socio-cultural return to a green and pleasant land Smith examines Britain's Establishment institutions the estates of her landed gentry and aristocracy through to an appetite for nostalgic products represented with pastoral or pre-modern symbolism. It is demonstrated that these institutions and pursuits play a central role in situating social cultural and political belonging. Crucially these institutions and pursuits rely upon a form of membership which is grounded in a kinship idiom centred upon inheritance and descent: who inherits the houses of privilege inherits England.