Tudor Ghosts in Black Shirts: The British Union of Fascists, Nazi Germany and the Quest for Musical Greatness in Britain.

This article examines the British Union of Fascists’ (BUF) engagement with music in the 1930s, focusing on how the BUF sought to challenge Britain’s longstanding reputation as an "unmusical nation" by promoting a racially defined national musical renaissance inspired by Nazi Germany’s cultural policies. BUF musicians and ideologues admired the Nazi regime’s campaigns against "degenerate" music and its cult of Richard Wagner, viewing Wagner as a model for elevating a national composer as a symbol of racial nationalism. The BUF debated which British composers—either from the late Victorian-Edwardian "English Musical Renaissance" or the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods—could fulfill a similar role, but no consensus was reached before the party’s dissolution. The article highlights the BUF’s racialization and partial "Nazification" of British musical heritage, revealing both their emulation of Nazi cultural strategies and their underlying insecurity about Britain’s musical identity.