am I English?

here I am shamelessly plundering the Normster (Norman Geras), who is (a) much cleverer than I am and (b) not English (he was born in what was then Rhodesia).  He notes that various politicians and others (Hilary Benn, Ed Miliband) have been urging us to be proud of being English.  One of them is a quarter American and the other of east European Jewish heritage I believe, and they are both English.  So what, I hear you cry, and so, to some extent, do I.  Norm also notes that others (Dan Hodges, for example, of whom I am rather a fan) take issue with this, and say that while they themselves are English there is no particular marker that they can identify for their Englishness.  I am not surprised that I am more inclined to ponder my own Englishness now that i have lived for almost five years outside England, and, worse still, in the land of the old enemy, France.  I wonder if Norm ponders on his identity as an African.  If he does, he doesn't do it publicly.  And I share the difficulty in finding a marker for my (or anyone else's) Englishness. The first time I ran a training workshop for a multi-national group of lawyers I was gently told off by the training supervisor who observed it: she said "You started on time, as the English do, but that meant that most of them missed the beginning".  A difficult one for me, that.  Norm takes issue with the "no marker for Englishness" brigade as follows:  Their case seems to be one of these three:

(1) no national identity of any kind is coherent or real;

(2) national identity is coherent and real for all other putative cases (being Brazilian, being French etc) except Englishness;

(3) national identities are real for some putative cases but not for others, and Englishness falls into the latter category.

and he demolishes those three premises very effectively.  But where does that leave us?  One of my grandfathers was Welsh and the other Scottish.  The Celtic part of my heritage is real to me.  But I was born in England, as both my parents were, and grew up and lived most of my life there.  I will probably not die there, but that is not the important bit.


What I suppose I believe is that there is no one marker for Englishness.  I'll support England against France tomorrow.  In a pub, which is in my view the proper place to watch football.  I drink Proper Tea.  When I was asked to serve tea recently at a tea party I was congratulated on my assuredness in handling teapots.  "But I've been doing it all my life!" I said.  My earliest memories are of my grandmother pouring tea.  I still put hot water in the pot first, and then throw it away,  as she did,  even if I am using (whisper it not) tea bags.  But there are plenty of English people who never do any of this.


I am sorry that St. George's Day parades are such a rarity.  I think Jerusalem should be the English anthem because , not despite of the fact that, it is an old socialist hymn.  When my granddaughter is my age she will have some memories (I hope) of me and things I did.  They will be part of her own marker of identity.  But maybe not of Englishness.

Bring Up The Bodies, Hilary Mantel

this is historical fiction at its very best.  The story, we know.  She is telling the story of the life and work of Thomas Cromwell, Master Secretary to Henry VIII, and this book tells the last three weeks or so of the life of Anne Boleyn, with references to earlier times.  We know the ending (and Anne has long been a hero to me) but the story still is gripping.
The notions are contemporary: "This is about, which will you have: Henry Tudor or Alessandro Farnese? The King of England at Whitehall, or some fantastically corrupt foreigner in the Vatican?"
German scholars speak "the many varieties of their tongue" - as they do today, and it was German scholars who were the Protestants that Henry was not.
Old England: "Did they pick the quinces?  It can't be long till we have frost.  I feel it in my bones."
Anne, indeed, is called "a bag of bones" and the book says judges herself more harshly than any others can.  When taken to the Tower she cries out that the lodgings are too good for her.  She has not after all, had a son for Henry.  Though the daughter she had for him lives to be the greatest monarch England has known.  Arguably.  And with red hair.
Those condemned long for life despite themselves: "you think you cannot keep breathing, but your ribcage has other ideas: rising and falling, emitting sighs.  You must thrive in spite of yourself, and so that you may do it God takes out your heart of flesh, and gives you a heart of stone."
Cromwell, in this book, says "they do not say she is innocent.  They are not able.  It may be that she is, but none of them will give his word on it."
"I have only a little neck", says Anne.  "It will be the work of a moment."