Let England Shake

Written over about two and a half years and recorded over five weeks in a church at Eype, near Bridport, with Rob Kirwan engineering. Much of it was played live, and it was the first record on which she played saxophone. Two songs debuted at Bestival in July 2009, and she previewed the album at the church on 18 December 2010. Seamus Murphy made twelve short films, one per song, released on DVD in December 2011.

Harvey told The Quietus that she wanted the songs to be open enough for people from other countries to find a way in. In an interview with NPR she said she had watched hours of war footage and tried to offset the brutal language with very beautiful music. It reached eight in the UK and 32 in the US, and returned to 24 in the UK after the Mercury win. Metacritic scores it 86 from 42 reviews. NME's Mike Williams gave it ten out of ten, Pitchfork named it Best New Music, and it topped the 2011 lists of NME, The Quietus, Mojo and the Guardian.

Scott Plagenhoef wrote in Pitchfork that the album paints vivid portraits of the First World War, and that despite the horror it was her most straightforward and easy to embrace record in a decade. He noted that Written on the Forehead borrows from Niney the Observer's Blood and Fire, and that Harvey commissioned a video for each of the twelve tracks from Seamus Murphy.