England: History of a Nation

English history is a vast and complicated story, made more so since 1707 by the question of where ‘English’ ends and ‘British’ begins. The long sweep of time from the first anonymous occupants of a nameless landscape to the regional government proposals of New Labour is a daunting, but also an exhilarating thing to contemplate.

Continuity and change, opposing but also complimentary forces, underlie the sequence of events in England’s history. But what is really important is a sense of the nation’s resources: with such a variety of human habitats and possibilities for human experience, England was an all-in-all for its people for many centuries, self-sufficient in the essentials of life.

But such a variety within a small compass also explains why the English as a nation can seem so elusive, a ‘secret people’ in G.K. Chesterton’s words. There is no single English type, but rather a whole range of them, often with conflicting characteristics. It is as English to put on a red coat and hunt foxes as it is to hold up a placard and block the road in protest against blood sports. All this has made for an independent-minded, versatile and creative people. The roots and the development of English distinctiveness are the basic themes of this book.