Oct 21, 2004
On Englishness
England is the country that 'dare not speak its name' (registration required)
You can imagine what the Scots think of that last bit. (Has Starkey never heard of the Scottish Enlightenment?) Scotland is a tiny country whose impact on the wider world, both as a nation in itself and as part of a wider Britain, has been out of all proportion to its numbers or wealth. And it ought to be quite possible to champion England without stooping to insults against its neighbours.
Moreover, whatever Starkey thinks, it is Britain as a whole that has mattered in modern world history. England on its own was, frankly, a deeply insignificant political entity - and that's regardless of whether we consider the early middle ages before the Norman Conquest (after which for some centuries it was simply a minor element in a much larger European empire, don't forget) or the later middle ages before the process of conquests and unions within the Isles that created the modern British state. And so as those other parts of the British Isles have broken away and re-asserted their own identities and varying degrees of political independence, it's hardly surprising that English identity is left staring at a vacuum.
It is not a modern 'obsession' with being British that's causing the problem with Englishness - it's the English habit (for several centuries, and not dead yet) of conflating 'England' and 'Britain', while failing for generations to create of and for ourselves anything that was new. Now the (old) non-English Britons are taking back their own, refusing to accept English appropriation and condescension (and boy, how that upsets the English in itself). And we have large numbers of 'new' Britons whose origins lay far beyond these islands: do you hear anyone calling themselves 'Black English'? Alternatively, as indeed they have always done, English people turn to the regional identities that mean more, more intimately, to them. Londoners, Scousers, Geordies, Brummies, Cornish, Suffolkers (that's me, by the way)... there is a world of thriving English regional and local identities out there, far more variegated than the stereotypes of English national identity (white cliffs of Dover, anyone? What the hell is that supposed to mean to me?).
The trouble is not that England dare not speak its name. The problem is that we, the English, have no idea what to call ourselves that does not sound parochial, insular, conservative (not to say reactionary), dated and deadly dull.
Dr David Starkey, the historian and broadcaster, is calling for a revival of English patriotism that recognises the country's unique role in shaping the modern world.
Dr Starkey, 59, believes that the reluctance of the English to champion their own homeland means that England"is now the country that dare not speak its name".
He also claims that English national identity is in danger of"going down the pan" because of a post-war obsession with the idea of being"British".
Dr Starkey's patriotic rallying cry coincides with his new 24-part television series on the nation's kings and queens, which begins on Channel 4 tomorrow night and will continue over four years. Monarchy will profile every English monarch from the year 400 to today at the rate of six a year.
The series is as much a defence of the English and Anglo-Saxon culture as a series of personality portraits."This series is about the history of England," said Dr Starkey."Yes, England - the country that dare not speak its name. In England we have this dreadful inhibition about talking about ourselves. England is a historic country which has shaped the world we are in. It is arguably the very origins of modernity. That is something we should celebrate, not be ashamed of."
Dr Starkey believes that the English need to celebrate their national identity in the same way that the Scots celebrate theirs. England, he argues, is much more important than Scotland, which is a"tiny" country that"does not much matter".
You can imagine what the Scots think of that last bit. (Has Starkey never heard of the Scottish Enlightenment?) Scotland is a tiny country whose impact on the wider world, both as a nation in itself and as part of a wider Britain, has been out of all proportion to its numbers or wealth. And it ought to be quite possible to champion England without stooping to insults against its neighbours.
Moreover, whatever Starkey thinks, it is Britain as a whole that has mattered in modern world history. England on its own was, frankly, a deeply insignificant political entity - and that's regardless of whether we consider the early middle ages before the Norman Conquest (after which for some centuries it was simply a minor element in a much larger European empire, don't forget) or the later middle ages before the process of conquests and unions within the Isles that created the modern British state. And so as those other parts of the British Isles have broken away and re-asserted their own identities and varying degrees of political independence, it's hardly surprising that English identity is left staring at a vacuum.
It is not a modern 'obsession' with being British that's causing the problem with Englishness - it's the English habit (for several centuries, and not dead yet) of conflating 'England' and 'Britain', while failing for generations to create of and for ourselves anything that was new. Now the (old) non-English Britons are taking back their own, refusing to accept English appropriation and condescension (and boy, how that upsets the English in itself). And we have large numbers of 'new' Britons whose origins lay far beyond these islands: do you hear anyone calling themselves 'Black English'? Alternatively, as indeed they have always done, English people turn to the regional identities that mean more, more intimately, to them. Londoners, Scousers, Geordies, Brummies, Cornish, Suffolkers (that's me, by the way)... there is a world of thriving English regional and local identities out there, far more variegated than the stereotypes of English national identity (white cliffs of Dover, anyone? What the hell is that supposed to mean to me?).
The trouble is not that England dare not speak its name. The problem is that we, the English, have no idea what to call ourselves that does not sound parochial, insular, conservative (not to say reactionary), dated and deadly dull.