:National museums both mediate and inculcate official and formal versions of national culture and by this means make and maintain national identity. Three times in the course of the twentieth century, various groups have attempted, and failed, to establish a national museum, identified variously as British or English. This paper explores just one of those attempts: the Museum of British History Project, first proposed in 1996 and finally killed off in 2008. The focus here is, therefore, on failure and on the role of the conflation of Britishness and Englishness in that failure as well as the nature of British identity construction more generally.All three attempts to create a national museum placed the rural idyll at the heart of the project. In the course of a detailed investigation of the Museum of British History project, this paper will pay particular attention to the proposed designs for a ‘British Landscape Gallery’ and the project's hegemonic, ruralised and Anglocentric perspectives. The gallery was the principal way in which established constructs of England and Englishness became conflated in the museum with Britain and Britishness and served to perpetuate the dominance of the ‘rural idyll’ in hegemonic manifestations of the nation. But the project remained stillborn in the face of the new museology: a failure which undoubtedly demonstrates the limits to the cultural power of the rural idyll.

中文翻译：

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“将 2000 多年的历史浓缩到 161,000 平方英尺的展示空间中”：限制英国性和未能创建英国历史博物馆

: 国家博物馆既调解和灌输官方和正式版本的国家文化，并通过这种方式建立和维护国家认同。在 20 世纪的过程中，各种团体曾三度尝试建立一个国家博物馆，但都失败了，该博物馆被认定为英国或英国。本文仅探讨了其中一项尝试：英国历史博物馆项目，该项目于 1996 年首次提出，最终于 2008 年终止。因此，这里的重点是失败以及英国性和英国性在失败中的作用以及更普遍的英国身份建构的性质。创建国家博物馆的所有三项尝试都将乡村田园风光置于项目的核心。在对英国历史博物馆项目进行详细调查的过程中，本文将特别关注“英国风景画廊”的拟议设计以及该项目的霸权、乡村化和盎格鲁中心主义观点。画廊是英国和英国性的既定结构在博物馆中与英国和英国性混合的主要方式，并有助于使“乡村田园诗”在国家霸权表现中的主导地位永久化。但面对新的博物馆学，该项目仍然停滞不前：这一失败无疑表明了乡村田园诗文化力量的局限性。画廊是英国和英国性的既定结构在博物馆中与英国和英国性混合的主要方式，并有助于使“乡村田园诗”在国家霸权表现中的主导地位永久化。但面对新的博物馆学，该项目仍然停滞不前：这一失败无疑表明了乡村田园诗文化力量的局限性。画廊是英国和英国性的既定结构在博物馆中与英国和英国性混合的主要方式，并有助于使“乡村田园诗”在国家霸权表现中的主导地位永久化。但面对新的博物馆学，该项目仍然停滞不前：这一失败无疑表明了乡村田园诗文化力量的局限性。