Hemming may have been wrong in exaggerating the demise of the eccentric. If British eccentricity has a single standard bearer, Elton John has a strong claim to the title. Glastonbury on Sunday night was evidence enough alone to undermine Hemming’s proposal. It is a needlessly pessimistic book that obviously lacked the ability to see into the future. And with that, the great tradition of the eccentric was going to die too. He suggested that the irregularities that defined society in England were being slowly eroded as the world drifted towards monoculture. The character of a nation will always inform its politics in direct and indirect ways, for good or bad.īut about 10 years ago Henry Hemming wrote in In Search of the English Eccentric that “the English eccentric was about to become an endangered species”. And so Brexit, far from destroying British eccentricity, was instead a manifestation of it.
