The Western Civil War: A Review of ‘The Haxton Review’

The song “English Civil War” feels very British. It deals with rising political tensions in England in the 1970s and was written by The Clash, one of the most famous English rock bands of all time. But it’s set to the tune of an American song, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” centered around America’s Civil War.

The connection, perhaps inadvertent, is nonetheless telling. The song plays a major role in The Haxton Review, author Joshua Knapp’s debut novel—which is without question a very British novel. It is by a British author, set in a small town in northern England, and deals with the horrifyingly relevant racial struggles between native white Englanders and their new, Middle Eastern neighbors. But Americans would do well to give it a read, because the struggles faced by Adam, the book’s main character and narrator, are not so different from the struggles faced by Americans today across the country.

The book centers around Adam, who finds himself slowly drawn into a local religious dispute. Adam is no hard-right populist. He voted for Nigel Farage’s populist Reform Party in 2024 “through gritted teeth,” a vote more out of distrust—or disgust—with the establishment parties and less out of a dedication to a cause. The natives of Lantyrn Royd, who are among the last white holdouts of Coxthorpe, a town which has slowly Islamified, wish to hold a “rush bearing” procession, an ancient English parade in which plants—rushes—are brought to a church. But following the original path of the town’s rush bearing parade will take it through a now-Islamic area. And the parade features the presence of a knight, representative of a crusader, which offends the Muslim population.

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