Helene von Bismarck's Fantastic Kingdom: A Stranger's Notes on a Contrary Country attempts to explain Britain to the British from an outsider's perspective, but the book ultimately delivers a conventional insider view, according to a review in The Guardian.
A Promising Premise Falls Short
Von Bismarck, a German historian and distant relative by marriage of Otto von Bismarck, seems ideally placed to offer fresh insights. Raised across Europe as a diplomat's daughter, educated at the same Brussels school attended by Boris Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen, and a frequent UK visitor for two decades, she combines distance and familiarity. Her grand theme is that Britain is a 'bewildering, complex, and wildly contradictory place': a monarchy and liberal democracy, a state of four nations, hostile to immigration yet pluralistic, obsessed with hierarchy yet informal.
However, while Von Bismarck repeatedly emphasizes her foreignness, she often writes like an insider. The promise of a stranger's-eye view gives way to Westminster conventional wisdom. She excels at identifying paradoxes—Britain's reverence for tradition and selective amnesia about history, the oddity of a status-conscious society where everyone is on first-name terms, and Rory Stewart's appeal for seriousness from a circus tent. She also notes the irony of Boris Johnson championing Ukraine's European future after leading Britain out of the EU.
Brexit Fixation and Caution
Yet these observations are overshadowed by the book's fixation on Brexit. The standard continental view—of an admirable country led astray by populism and provincialism—is rehearsed throughout, creating a time warp where Britain appears frozen in a pre-pandemic intellectual landscape, reliving the referendum and its aftermath.
More disappointing is Von Bismarck's reluctance to pursue her insights to logical conclusions. When genuinely contentious issues arise, she retreats into caution. Discussing Scottish independence, she avoids weighing whether the costs of breaking up the union might be justified. Encountering Suella Braverman's splenetic rhetoric on immigration, she informs readers that the former home secretary's personal motivations are 'outside the scope of this book'.
This reserve is striking. Von Bismarck is neither a diplomat nor a civil servant, yet she writes as though Anglo-German relations depended on her discretion. The reason may lie in the intended audience: she explicitly writes for Britons. Even so, she feels compelled to explain that the country is 'located by the sea', that Scotland contains many independence supporters, and that shadow ministers scrutinize government departments. Large sections read less like illuminating reflections than civics lessons for invading Daleks.
Missed Comparative Opportunities
This is especially frustrating because Von Bismarck is well placed to offer comparisons that might have enriched the book: between Britain's unwritten constitution and Germany's legalism, British pragmatism and continental ambition, or Anglican ambiguity and German earnestness. Instead, she spends much time explaining systems her readers likely already understand.
Ultimately, what Fantastic Kingdom lacks is judgment. Britain is hardly short of books attempting to explain itself, and readers seeking deeper analysis may find more rewarding alternatives. Brian Harrison's recently published Yesterday, for example, covers much of this ground with greater precision and considerably more panache.
One closes the book with the sense that Von Bismarck knows more than she is willing to say—and wishing for more of the sharp, memorable insights that made George Mikes's insider-outsider view so enduring. George Mikes, in How to Be an Alien (1946), famously observed: 'Continental people have sex lives; the English have hot-water bottles.'
