[6] After the release of 1991's Don't Try This at Home, Billy Bragg became a father in 1993 and took time out to concentrate on fatherhood before recording William Bloke in 1996.

[7] Bragg has said that he saw the albums he made in the 1980s as "ideologically political" because that's how he viewed his country of Britain.

"[8] The album's lyrics deal with themes such as lost idealism ("From Red to Blue"),[9] lamenting the loss of childhood dreams ("The Space Race Is Over"),[10] latent revolution ("A Pict Song"), romance ("The Fourteenth of February"), domesticity and fatherhood ("Brickbat"),[9] and family values ("King James Version").

Bragg said in 1996, "It seemed to me that during the cease-fire I saw the first photographs on television of Belfast without any troops or police on the street.

What was happening there was absolutely abnormal; it looked like Vietnam or Yugoslavia – but it ain't, and I wanted to write a song that reflected that realization.