Albion's Secret History
by Guy Mankowski

Snapshots of how English pop culture’s rebels and outsiders, from The Long Blondes and The Libertines, to Tricky and Goldfrapp, altered our sense of a green but sometimes unpleasant land.

Albion's Secret History compiles snapshots of English pop culture’s rebels and outsiders, from Evelyn Waugh to PJ Harvey via The Long Blondes and The Libertines. By focusing on cultural figures who served to define England, Guy Mankowski looks at those who have really shaped Albion’s secret history, not just its oft-quoted official cultural history. He departs from the narrative that dutifully follows the Beatles, The Sex Pistols and Oasis, and, by instead penetrating the surface of England’s pop history (including the venues it was shaped in), throws new light on ideas of Englishness.

As well as music, Mankowski draws from art, film, architecture and politics, showing the moments at which artists like Tricky and Goldfrapp altered our sense of a sometimes green but sometimes unpleasant land.

'The most illuminating odyssey through lost, hidden or forgotten English pop culture since Michael Bracewell's England Is Mine.'

Rhian E. Jones, author of Clampdown: Pop-Cultural Wars on Class and Gender

Reviews:
An inherently fascinating, iconoclastic, and informative read from cover to cover, "Albion's Secret History: Snapshots of England's Pop Rebels and Outsiders" is an original work of impressive research and highly recommended for community, college and university library 20th Century English Cultural History collections. ~ Jack Mason, Midwest Book Review

'With such an array of talent and with forays into film, literature and comedy, the running themes Mankowski draws from his varied subjects are as ambitious as they are thrilling...the way Mankowski uses them to ignite his thesis is intriguing and fresh. This book is about celebrating the unsung, and Mankowski has a knack for succinctly articulating what makes each one so special. The perfect banishing spell for the ghosts currently plaguing England.' ~ Maria Schurr, Pop Matters, https://www.popmatters.com/guy-mankowski-albions-secret-history

‘Polishing minute details and allowing them to shimmer from the page and re-colour our own faded memories – that’s what Mankowski does best. That he achieves the same effect with some of the people and events from history is an excellent achievement…It is, in fact, as if a musician is performing a medley of favourite tracks alongside some moments of deeply impassioned improvisation…Exceptional…some magnificent passages… There is something for everyone in this compilation…Albion’s Secret History is one for the rebels, one for the thinking rebels.’ ~ Jane Roberts, The Librocultrualist , https://thelibrocubicularistreviews.wordpress.com/2021/03/26/the/

“Mankowski offers an excellent analysis as to how Pulp used their hometown in their music. Mankowski really does dig deep and refers to scenes such as the mid-nineties Romo scene previously found in clubs such as Camden’s Club Skinny along with overlooked and underrated artists such as Patrick Wolf and Gazelle Twin. Mankowski also reminds us how locations and how the presently closed music venues contribute not just to music, but to the evolving British culture as told by the experience of everyday people. To quote The Libertines, as Mankowski does, it is “Time for Hero’s” previously overlooked and not fully acknowledged by mainstream British society to be recognised.” ~ XS Noize, https://www.xsnoize.com/book-review-albions-secret-history-guy-mankowski/

“Albion’s Secret History is an enjoyable skim through an enormous subject… Mankowski must be applauded for his guts… The terrific chapter on Peter Cook and Evelyn Waugh when talking of class privilege is kept on-point. Albion…. is a fun read. Armed with the knowledge that this is one take amongst many on “England”, the reader can relax, aware this is a doomed mission from the outset and look to see what insights and forgotten treasures Mankowski’s mudlarking has thrown up. This book is Mankowski’s story, revealing his disappointments, hopes and generation’s take on what England is.” Richard Foster, Louder Than War

~ Richard Foster, Louder Than War, https://louderthanwar.com/guy-mankowski-albion-secret-history/

'What emerges is a dreamlike parade of personalities whose efforts to speak their own minds, follow their own muses, and be what we might call in contemporary parlance their “authentic selves” reflect a larger, arguably unconscious, yearning within English culture to break free from otherwise stifling social norms and, in so doing, to steer English history into uncharted waters.' ~ Small Press Reviews, 5

Guy Mankowski has written the book I've been wanting to read for years. ‘Albion's Secret History is a highly intelligent and loving meditation on creativity and artistic freedoms, pursued over decades by a host of innovators, to those who had previously been denied on the basis of their position within English culture. Mankowski joins so many beautiful dots and creates a mesmerising story of social struggle and the shock and influence of the new. Magnificent and truly brilliant. ~ Daniel Gothard, author of Reunited and Simon Says

No future in England’s Dreaming? The gleaming fragments of the nation’s cultural and countercultural histories unearthed by Guy Mankowski’s Albion’s Secret History suggest otherwise. ~ Karl Whitney, author of Hit Factories: A Journey Through the Industrial Cities

The most illuminating odyssey through lost, hidden or forgotten English pop culture since Michael Bracewell's 'England Is Mine'. ~ Rhian E. Jones, author of Clampdown: Pop-Cultural Wars on Class and Gender

This is a superbly written book, where Mankowski tells how uncomfortable, awkward and magnificent it is to be English. It tells of a scary and beautiful world of musical geniuses, mavericks, chameleons, perverts and wizards, who thought that England was theirs and that it owed them a living, turning Albion into a treasure that everybody with a decent taste in music and some sense of humour can cherish. ~ Giacomo Bottà, Adjunct Professor in Urban Studies and Music Research, University of Helsinki

Already recognised as a major rising talent, Mankowski here establishes himself as a significant voice. ~ Andrew Crumey, Man Booker Longlisted author of Sputnik Caledonia

Albion's Secret History is a searing discussion of England. Through his snapshots of cultural history, Mankowski explores the form and shape of English identity to reveal who we are, who we've been, and who we'd like to be. ~ Dr. Jon Coburn, Lecturer in History and Heritage, University of Lincoln

Albion's Secret History offers a refreshing upheaval of the concept of fixed British character to present a united sub-culture that instead runs on a creative spirit of constant evolution and reinvention. A host of freaks, rebels, and geniuses stand under one banner to feast on panthers, wear bleeding hearts of many stripes on their sleeves, each pursuing artistic liberty that would continue to rock the political establishment and old social orders to their core, calling death on the ashes of tradition as these heroes and heroines dance in its flames. Mankowski offers an emergent nostalgia for the future that rips through the strictures of class identity that we are still wrestling with today. Incisive, insightful and vital. ~ Adam Steiner, author of Into The Never: Nine Inch Nails And The Creation Of The Downward Spiral