Land of Hope and Glory

The story

The tune is the broad "trio" melody of Edward Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1, composed in 1901. King Edward VII told Elgar that the melody would make a great song, and when Elgar was asked to write a work for the King's coronation he took up the idea in his Coronation Ode, to words by the poet and essayist A. C. Benson, using the march's melody in its first and last sections. The King's illness postponed the coronation, and Elgar made a separate song, first sung by Clara Butt in June 1902. Only the first of the seven stanzas of the Ode's final section was reused in it, and that stanza is the part popularly sung today. Its first five notes resemble the opening of "God Save the King" in an early version published in 1745.

The march was introduced at the Proms in 1901 by Henry Wood, who later recalled that he had not foreseen its broad melody becoming "our second national anthem". It was played as "Land of Hope and Glory" at the last concert of 1905, and from 1916 to 1918 it followed Wood's Fantasia on British Sea Songs at the closing concerts. Radio broadcasts from 1927 and television from 1953 carried the Last Night of the Proms to a wide audience; from 1947 the conductor Malcolm Sargent made the song part of its standard programme, with the audience singing, dressing up and waving flags. When it was left out, press and public protest restored it. In 2001, after the September 11 attacks, Leonard Slatkin replaced the usual pieces with a more serious programme, but they returned the following year.

In 2020 the BBC announced that "Land of Hope and Glory" and "Rule, Britannia!" would not be sung at the Last Night. Reports linked the decision to the Black Lives Matter movement, whose supporters, after the murder of George Floyd that summer, accused the songs of glorifying colonialism and slavery. The decision was criticised by members of the public, the media and politicians, among them Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who accused the BBC of "cringing embarrassment about our history". The BBC said the change had been due to social distancing in the COVID-19 pandemic and reversed it; both songs were performed with a reduced choir and orchestra.

The song is used as an anthem for England, which has no agreed national anthem of its own. England's rugby league team sang it as their anthem and still walk out to it; it was England's victory anthem at the Commonwealth Games until 2010, when a public poll chose "Jerusalem" instead; and a BBC survey of 2006 found 55% of the English public preferring it to "God Save the King" as a national anthem. It is regarded as the unofficial anthem of the Conservative Party, and in 1997 the Labour Party used it ironically throughout a broadcast criticising John Major's government. Football supporters, among them those of Wolverhampton Wanderers, the team Elgar supported, sing it with their own words. In the United States, Canada and the Philippines its melody, without words, is the traditional processional at school and university graduations.

What it says

A song of patriotic pride in the nation, written for a king's coronation; it has been cherished as a second anthem and, in 2020, accused of glorifying colonialism. The mood is broad, ceremonial and confident, carried by Elgar's march melody.

The words