John Bull ....on the wireless today

Now here is one I will be listening too, more so as debate on national identity in the wake of Brexit rumbles on.

"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the origin of this personification of the English everyman and his development as both British and Britain in the following centuries. He first appeared along with Lewis Baboon (French) and Nicholas Frog (Dutch) in 1712 in a pamphlet that satirised the funding of the War of the Spanish Succession. 

The author was John Arbuthnot, a Scottish doctor and satirist who was part of the circle of Swift and Pope, and his John Bull was the English voter, overwhelmed by taxes that went not so much into the war itself but into the pockets of its financiers. For the next two centuries, Arbuthnot’s John Bull was a gift for cartoonists and satirists, especially when they wanted to ridicule British governments for taking advantage of the people’s patriotism.

With Judith Hawley, Professor of 18th Century Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London, Miles Taylor, Professor of British History and Society at Humboldt, University of Berlin and Mark Knights Professor of History at the University of Warwick

Producer: Simon Tillotson"*

It will be broadcast just after 9 today and is then available by following the link.

Picture; JOHNNY BULL and the ALEXANDRIANS (1814) By William Charles Engraving, Political cartoon.

*John Bull ....In Our Time, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0018nsd