Britain

In the opening of this brief polemic, I must acknowledge conscious bias: as of 5 a.m. on the morning after the Brexit referendum, I am a card-carrying member of the Scottish National Party. This was not anticipated. Brought up in Belfast as an Ulster-Scots Unionist with a determination to be “British” rather than “Irish”, and educated in the most English of institutions, I am now in the awkward position of being grateful for the Irish state’s continuing political claim on Northern Ireland, which renders me an EU citizen. Once, I was clear that I was British. Now, I am not so sure. Once, I considered myself a scholar of Victorian Britain. Now, I am increasingly aware that up until 2013 I was exclusively a scholar of Victorian England, and, in the present moment, my research is strongly aligned with “Scottish studies”, a field which has had surprisingly little dialogue with “Victorian studies”.