God Is an Englishman is the first book in this wonderful saga about the Swann family. Adam Swann, a 31-year-old cavalryman in the service of Queen Victoria’s army, decides to break off with his family’s military tradition and gives up his soldierly life in lieu of starting anew in England as a businessman. The road ahead of him will not be easy, as old sentiments still prevail where people making a living in a new, industrial England are looked down on and someone like Adam, giving up his army career is thought foolish. Adam Swann persists in his desire to be his own boss and not spent his life serving somebody else, even if it’s the Crown of England. In his struggles to become a respectable and successful owner of a horse-carriage business, he has a few supporters, including his young wife, Henrietta and, surprisingly, his own father. The readers follow Adam and his personal and business lives for nine years. These are very tumultuous years for England as well. It is the 19th century, the country changes from an agricultural one into an industrial empire, with railroads ruling the transportation, mills, mines and factories replacing the farms and Adam Swann takes on a daring project of using horses as his road to success. Donald Richmond Horne AO (26 December 1921 – 8 September 2005) was an Australian journalist, writer, social critic, and academic who became one of Australia's best known public intellectuals, from the 1960s until his death. If you type into a search engine, “God is a . . .” near the top is “Englishman” (just after “astronaut”—go figure!). We quote this phrase all the time in England. It’s from a well-known book by R.F. Delderfield. Suffice it to say that my country’s relationship with God has a long and complicated history. Nowhere is this more evident than in the words of the hymn “Jerusalem.” Considered one of our most patriotic songs, the hymn also has the dubious honor of being the only one where every line can be answered in the negative:

Confessions of a new boy. Ringwood, Victoria: Viking (published 1985). 1986. p.372. ISBN 978-0-14-008754-3.

For one thing, there is more to the story than the adventures of the individual family members. In addition to having eight children, Adam Swann has been all this time building his business, a hauling firm that has taken on the task of carrying the loads delivered around the country by the railroads from the train depots to their final destinations. (I like to think of them as English predecessors to modern companies liked Fed-Ex.) Delderfield wrote The Adventures of Ben Gunn (1956) which follows Ben Gunn from sexton's son to pirate and is narrated by Jim Hawkins in Gunn's words. It describes the life of Ben Gunn from the events which led him to leave Devon, and eventually to his presence on Treasure Island and involvement in the story told by Stevenson, and follows up with a brief summary of Ben Gunn's life afterwards. Adam is a great character, and certainly deserved to have another, equally good character as his partner during this enjoyable saga, and the author has provided this in the shape of Henrietta, Daughter of a somewhat unscrupulous mill owner, a young woman with a mind of her own, whose character develops as the story unfolds. Several of Delderfield's historical novels and series involve young men who return from war and take up careers in peacetime that allow the author to delve deeply into social history from the Edwardian era to the early 1960s. Essentially, this was really well done historical fiction. I cared about the characters, and I was not bored by historical details (mostly). At some points I wondered where it was going - there’s not much predictability in the sudden turns a man’s life can take - but overall there was momentum and motion and purpose, and satisfying change in the characters.

I feel like I'm always tempted to give R.F. Delderfield at least 4 stars because his stories are just so readable. The novels are concerned with the portrayal 'ordinary, decent folk', striving to 'get on' and become a success, whilst remaining true to themselves and their values. These values include patriotism, decency, integrity, thrift, industriousness, success gained through service and hard work. The novels, now described as 'old fashioned', celebrate English history, humanity, and liberalism while demonstrating little patience with entrenched class differences and snobbery.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Adam Swann and the young wife he as good as abducted seem at first like cardboard characters, Adam only a symbol of honorable and aggressive business enterprise, Henrietta only a symbol of innocence, ignorance and frivolity. But Mr. Delderfield is too sure a professional novelist to leave them in such‐ rudimentary con dition. As his sprawling tale marches briskly ahead Adam and Henrietta change and grow, becoming different, wiser and better people than they were when first introduced. One may not believe every surprising episode in “God Is an Eng lishman,” but one learns to be lieve in Adam and Henrietta. They are not notably interest ing or likable people; but they are real, and Adam in par ticular seems just the sort of self‐confident, intelligent gam bler who, no doubt, created many of the business empires of the last century. I was not sure what to expect of this book, but when I received it and saw how large it was, I was certainly surprised. I was further surprised by how engrossing a book it actually was. Giving a plot outline really doesn't convey how good of a book this is, but I'll go ahead and try anyway. In 2016, The Saturday Paper and Aēsop jointly announced the creation of the Horne Prize for essay writing. [12] This is truly a Cecil B. DeMille style of book -- sweeping in its scope and diligent in its details of the lives of a whole cast of people: Henrietta's father and his mileau, All the employees of Swann-on-Wheels, the neighbors of the home the Swanns eventually bought, etc. And it was fascinating! The author wove all these disparate threads together in a saga that was so gripping it was hard to put the book down put the book down. In Chapter 3, he explains, “This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.”

This is a fascinating and outstanding novel about exciting times in economic and social development throughout Victorian England. The next novels in the series - - Theirs Was the Kingdom (Swann Family Saga) and Give Us This Day (God Is an Englishman) - - bring the younger Swanns into the business and they face the next challenges as the face of road freight transport changes from horse drawn to motorised delivery.

Distinctions

He could not be sure whether his presence brought any real comfort but it must have eased Briarley's inner tensions to some extent for presently he said, 'I didn't see a great deal of him, sir. When I was a kid he was mostly in India or Ireland. He came here once, on leave. Last autumn, it was. We… we sat here for a bit, waiting for the school boneshaker to take him to the station.' It's not a matter of years, but of experience, don't you see? What are our casualties to date? Not far short of three million, I'd say, and a third of them dead at eighteen-plus. No one who hasn't been out can imagine what it's like. Mentally a man like you must have aged about a year every month, and that makes you immeasurably senior to theorists like me, and faithful old buffers like Cordwainer, Acton and Gibbs. The reading public, always a confederation of wildly dif ferent tribes of people with exceedingly different tastes in books, was never so frag mented as it is today. One man's memorable and signifi cant novel is another's abomi nation. Another man's thor oughly enjoyable novel is an other's mess of commercial pottage. Which brings us to the news that R. F. Delderfield's new novel, “God Is an English man,” is now published. From master author R. F. Delderfield, the first in the beloved classic God Is an Englishman series.The first novel in the epic God Is an Englishman series, this book is a stirring saga of England in the 19th century, as the Industrial Revolution takes hold, forever changing the landscape of England and her people. Horne was conferred with degrees honoris causa by a number of Australian academic institutions, including Griffith University (Doctor of the University), University of New South Wales ( Doctor of Letters), University of Canberra (Doctor of the University), the Australian Academy of the Humanities (Fellow), and the University of Sydney (Honorary Doctorate: 2005). [1]