The pedantic part: England, in a proper sense in which culture and institutionality cross-fertilise, means the victory of the nation over the state-nation, and the release from a corrupt political class. This is also the recovery of what England had, will regain, and will rebuild. It’s hard to avoid a ‘listing’ tendency (Orwell has a lot to answer for here) – indeed the listing of listings has now established itself as an academic sub-genre. Beer gardens on a long sunny day. The South Bank. The Angel of the North. Premier League football. Bottom-up democratic traditions. But more fundamentally, what you experience in England, that is, in England – in large part swamped since 1945, or indeed 1746, by a biscuit-arsed, managerial, surveillant British call-centrism – is a sense of privacy which easily turns into a goodnatured neighbourliness, a sense of honesty and a dislike of pilfering and cheating which crosses classes, a politeness which is crucial to quality of life, and an unique dark and weird sense of humour which has often mistakenly been described as British (though the other of the UK’s nations have lots of this too).

Most pressingly, what England may ‘mean to me’ (as a possible non-member of the EU – though I find statements about England’s ‘naturally Tory’ status deeply suspect, as they are almost always based on British data), in the unlikely Doomsday Scenario of no (con)federal solution being reached, is having to apply for a work visa, since not only have I lived in England for only a few years, if we must do the DNA business I have nothing to offer, since both my parents and all four of their parents were born in the same Scottish town. (This may beg the question of why I spend so much time writing about post-British England, though very few English people take umbrage – a good sign). A real test of civicism is whether in a hypothetically non-EU, non-confederal England, the treatment of immigrants would get better than it is under the UK. I find it hard to imagine not. The thing is that I would be applying for such a hypothetical work visa, because England is the place in which I want to be – a fact thrown into immediate relief by the other fact that the United Kingdom is one of the last places on earth in which I want to be. What’s not to like: England, like Scotland, has great countryside and great cities, acres of decent people who will give you a conversation as well as the time of day (though less so the closer you get to Canary Wharf), widely-accepted basic standards of civility, and a sense of the ironic which exists almost nowhere else.

No, it’s the UK that’s a shit-hole: politically corrupt at the most fundamental level; given up to systematic theft by banks and streamlined agencies which think that people can be fooled by repetition of the term ‘unfortunately’; struggling with a wall-eyed imperial hangover which it tries to cure by throwing non-wealth-producing financial instruments at a small corner of its land to create debt bubbles; home to an Established political class which has come to seem unshiftable with its constitution which can only be approached when it has already happened; a brain-rotting celebrity culture; a sense of besiegedness that creates a total pickling in security, profiling, and, bizarrely, nuclear weapons… None of this last part is what England means to me. England is the possibility of escape from all this, of tapping resources that were already there and that have remained there underground, of building a country that knows and celebrates its medium size like its dodgy weather and lets its workers do real work and pays them real pay for it, elects who it wants instead of placing a despairing x next to the least bad profile, and knows how to have a laugh. It is, or rather it will be, a country in which PR gurus are pelted with tomatoes till they find a real job, in which estate agents are not counted as ‘professionals’, in which planned managerial strategies are never described as ‘unfortunate’, and in which the Queen lives in a council flat in Deptford (or however that saying goes) – but finds that she quite likes it, since the underclass created by the British political classes have realised that council flats are perfectly fine places to live if they’re surrounded by infrastructure and community; in fact its togetherness reminds her, in some aristocratic gene memory turned Gothic and ghostly, of some of the ideals of empire and Commonwealth that at the time no-one noticed were thoroughly rotten, because all they were were the grubby, mean-spirited capital interests of Britain.

Michael Gardiner is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick.

To me, England and Englishness is a state of mind rather than just being a member of a people or race on an island just off the European mainland. It is a state of mind much admired and respected by many, whether English or not. There is also a strange English tradition of self-hate, or at least loathing, as Englishness is despised by many in England who would do anything to destroy it – mainly socialists and others on the left, and it is they who often decry ‘tradition’.

When I think of England, I think of a people who are proud without being jingoistic, who are settled and comfortable in their own body and history – never wishing to be anything other than English, and who just have this natural balance about themselves. The English countryside is the perfect mirror.

They also believe strongly in fair play being the cradle of liberalism, modern democracy and freedom with responsibility. A willingness to support the underdog and wanting to give a helping hand to others and a clear sense of Christian Conservative principles underpinning the country’s instincts.

Lastly, what also sets us apart is our independence of mind, creativity and invention, a willingness to view authority with a more than healthy scepticism and also our dry and often self-deprecating sense of humour.

This is a jumbled mix I know, but it is really difficult to describe Englishness because it is just the sense you have of what it means to be English, and what it means to others. A state of mind as well as a strong sense of place.

Certainly, when I meet people from abroad I feel they look up to us still for the rules, history and standards we have set and expounded across the world. I also feel they can see this natural sense of comfort and confidence the English have about themselves as well as our scepticism about authority, the sense of fairness and our humour. Some, especially in the European Union, can see and sense this, but do not quite understand it, or want to understand it. I sense those in the rest of world are more comfortable about the English than those in the rest of the European Union who continue to be on a mission to try and control it. Those who dislike the English, I feel, are jealous of the English.

As well as looking up to the English, I suspect many from abroad would find it a bizarre trait that so many in England actually despise the English. Clearly, the Labour Party, especially New Labour, and the pseudo-intellectuals who hang onto its coat tails would do anything to dismantle it as all socialists do not believe in liberty and freedom, because they fundamentally believe the state comes first.

I never understand how the last Labour Government lost control of our country’s borders unless they did so on purpose. By allowing uncontrolled immigration, they willingly allowed a loss of Englishness, certainly this was the result of those coming here ending up in ghettoes as there were not enough resources nor time to allow proper assimilation. I am hopeful that those who have settled here recently will quickly become part of this nation’s rich fabric – and want to – much to the socialists’ annoyance I am sure.

Labour created the ‘West Lothian Question’ which has opened up some fissures with the countries within the British Isles with the hope that this would damage Englishness. The English are left paying twice, subsidising the rest of the British Isles but then still having to pay tuition fees and prescription charges for example, while in Scotland there are no such charges because these are subsidised by English money. That clear unfairness breaches the English sense of fair play and therefore is actually driving a heightened sense of Englishness – a socialist own goal, one of many I would say.

Labour also signed up for more European Union control and never be fooled by Blair and Brown’s refusal to join the Euro being based on economics, it was because they knew they would never win a referendum in England and therefore Britain. Perhaps it was a combination of the natural socialist tendency to dislike Englishness coupled with some, like Blair and Brown, who were not English.

In conclusion, being English is an indescribable, almost spiritual feeling. It is hard to put your finger on it, but that is the part of its beauty and its captivation. By and large one has still truly won the lottery of life having been born in England.

Every morning when I wake up I just know I am English, that it is great to be English and that England is the best country in the world. Granted we may no longer be the greatest at playing those games we created, but we still play them with much verve, skill and hopefulness that maybe one day soon we will regain our sporting prowess to match our proud history and current place in the world.

Karl McCartney is the Conservative MP for Lincoln.

Granted: I’m not English. So why write about Englishness? One reason might simply be that I like England and Britain. England is not my home, but still a place where I like to linger and to roam. And, well, I’m doing research about Englishness in literature, so I try to think about the issue in an academic way.

Yet why should a German be interested in that? And is my perspective a German perspective after all? When I think about how much I’ve travelled Europe alone this year, how I’ve made friends from all over the continent, lived in Italy for nine months, and have been to Britain for more than six months during the last four years without having actually lived there, I’m after all not so sure about the exclusively German perspective. Maybe I’m wearing German glasses with a European-cut lens through which I take a look at England.

Now what does England mean to me? I’d like to borrow a typically English form to present my ideas: the List. Through my German, European-cut glasses, I visualise my version of England: with red telephone and letter boxes, double decker buses, queues and many apologies, exact change for bus fares, myriads of train providers, stations without litter bins, “mind the gap”, centralised London, Penguin books, tucan and pelican crossings, yellow lights flashing next to zebra crossings, left-hand traffic, two yellow stripes on each side of the road, (littered) canals with narrowboats, red-bricked terraced houses, rows of chimneys with seagulls, single-glazed windows, fenced gardens, burglar alarms, mantelpieces, carpets in pubs and even bathrooms, separate warm and cold taps, electrical showers with low, medium and high pressure (I always wonder who actually enjoys having a shower with low pressure?!), mist and fog, rain showers, a nice drizzle and sunny spells, sparsely dressed, freezing girls, health and safety regulations, obscure cricket rules and village greens, the home of football, oaks and sheep on green fields, rolling hills, hedges and stone walls, a day out, Ordnance Survey maps, public footpaths, gates and stiles, cold cider, warm beer, foaming local ale pumped into royal pint glasses, early closing times and last orders, terrible instant coffee and the world’s best tea, scones and clotted cream, Cadbury’s chocolate, ‘5 a day’, going out for a curry, poppadoms and naan, Pukka Pies, fish ’n’ chips with vinegar, brown sauce, mushy peas, Marmite, full English breakfast, the distinct smell of B&Bs, warm welcomes and hospitality.

These loose associations are just a small part of the England that is appearing in front of my metaphorically bespectacled eyes. My list of course features some typical notions of Englishness, but also some aspects the English themselves perhaps wouldn’t have recognised because they are just too familiar with them. And this also leads me to a possible answer to the question of why a non-English person might also dare to interfere in reflecting on English national identity. My general impression is that the people who are academically interested in Englishness are often people who haven’t got an exclusively English background but tend to live in cultural border zones. By engaging themselves with Englishness, they not only reflect on their own cultures but also help form the open character of modern England because, after all, they happily share the affection for that peculiar country.

Anna Rettberg is a student at Justus Liebig University, Giessen, currently working on “Challenging Englishness: Rebranding and Rewriting National Identity in Contemporary English Fiction”.

What England means to me can be summarised (with helpfully neat alliteration) in three words – language, literature and landscape, all of which I feel are inextricably intertwined in my cultural and historical identity. I was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire and have lived in other parts of the country but returned to my home town when expecting my first child because, from somewhere, came the idea that I wanted my children to have the same geographical roots as me, creating a link between our separate identities.

Language, it seems to me, must be a unifying factor within national identity otherwise how else could we all live and work together in a co-operative and functional society? This is not to say, of course, that England does not now consist of a population which speaks many different languages. English is spoken mononlingually by 95% of the population of the United Kingdom, but Punjabi is the second most spoken language in the country. Immigration has brought numerous other languages into the United Kingdom alongside our own additional languages such as Welsh, Irish and Scots Gaelic. The English language itself has developed from Latin and Norman French along with other influences to become the vast lingual bank of hundreds of thousands of words that it is today. I don’t remember learning this rich and versatile language (not that I know it in its entirety) but I do remember always having enjoyed its expressiveness and eloquence and having always loved reading it. It is intriguing that the English language is never static but always changing, as old words are forgotten and new ones invented, keeping pace with modern life, but please Microsoft, keep your Americanisms to yourself.

Having studied literature for many years I find it strange that universities still tend to refer to the study of literature as ‘English’, although this refers in part to the fact that it is in English, there is much less tendency to study purely ‘English’ literature on degree courses. However, the canon stubbornly remains the same, weighted by class, race and gender. Our education system embraces multi-cultural literature up to a point, but is it enough? Does the literature of ‘England’ still mean Shakespeare rather than Linton Kwesi Johnson? The output of our English authors and poets means we have a national library of great writing, a wealth of diverse texts which capture the language, experiences and imaginations of writers over hundreds of years and to which new texts are constantly being added in a never-ending celebration of language on the page. Even e-books will need new works.

We often look to literature to transport us somewhere else but we also have a deep affection for literature which we can identify with our own region, our own landscape. Look in the offices of any tourist board in the country and you may find leaflets tucked away which promote the region’s literary connections – Hardy’s Dorset, the Brontes’ Yorkshire, Jane Austen’s Bath (although she hated the place)) and the Lake District’s Beatrix Potter among many others. We hold onto these connections between writers and their landscapes as part of our cultural identity.

I never realised how important landscape was to me, how it had become part of my identity until the rolling Cotswolds of Gloucestershire and its mellow villages, which I was so used to seeing, were no longer around me. However much we all enjoy travelling there is something deeply reassuring about the first view of the familiar patchwork fields of England from the window of a returning plane.

‘What England means to me’ now is that we need to hold onto and treasure the history, landscape and heritage we have, the cricket fields and ‘honey still for tea’ of quintessential Englishness. Picturesque towns and villages around the country are thronged with tourists in pursuit of this very thing. Yet we also need to change our traditional views and attitudes about what an English person looks and sounds like and embrace a changing perspective of a rainbow nation of creed, cultures, faiths, languages and literatures which can only enrich our views and experiences of England today and in the future.

Contributed by Rosalind Davie, born 1960 in Cheltenham, lover of language and literature, currently studying for a PhD at the University of Gloucestershire.

It’s hard to be rational about something that goes as deep as England does for me, an Englishman. In good psychoanalytical fashion I will begin at the beginning, with my childhood experience.

My father had lost a much-loved brother in the Second World War and two uncles in the First World War. These men had died for England. It was hard for me as a young child to imagine what this England could be, that it should justify people dying for it; it would need to be much bigger and more mysterious than the people and buildings I could see around me. The only thing that was capable of signifying this England to me was the vast and eternal sea. My Grandmother lived on the coast and she would take me for walks on the shingle beach in all weathers. She told me that I would have liked the uniformed men in the photographs on her dressing table, but they had sailed away in a big ship and never come home again.

My England is conventional, a litany of familiar objects bobbing around on a sacramental sea of Englishness. It’s the English sense of humour, and how this complements our pragmatism and unflappability; it’s The Cenotaph, football and cricket, the Book of Common Prayer and Anglican psalmody, common law and the pub; Thomas Hardy, Elgar’s Cello Concerto, Anthony Powell, Vaughan Williams’ setting of On Wenlock Edge, John Fowles, Britten’s War Requiem…

England is home. I was taught that the English countryside is the most beautiful in the world, and I truly believe that it is; but it’s more than beautiful. The countryside is where you can see the land of the English, where it isn’t hidden under concrete. The mere thought of our countryside our oaks and beeches, fields, hedgerows and churches, our countryside, thrills me with a sense of my own connection with the landscape, a connection etched out in Anglo Saxon place names and field boundaries. The sound-track is the cawing of crows, the skylark’s song, and church bells.

But now I have to pause and take a deep breath, and even blink back a tear.

The Whackets knew about the death of England long before commentators started writing books about it. It feels to us as though England has been betrayed. This comes partly from a sense that people like the Whackets, who had always been the salt of the English earth and given better than good service to their country (my father was a third generation Royal Marine), were left behind in the decadent 1960s. Our leaders turned out to be weak and useless, and the Government’s failure to prevent mass immigration was final confirmation that the England that had been fought and died for was finished. What little remained of England after 1968 was denatured by the American cultural hegemony and washed out by the big corporations in what Paul Kingsnorth has described as ‘the Blanding of Britain’.

It is a function of culture to tell us what to feel. If the prevailing culture tells the English anything about themselves it is that they should be ashamed of their Englishness apart from the bits that support the needs of diversity or, at a pinch, the ‘heritage industry’. According to this culture my picture of England is unhistorical caricature, inconsistent, fails to take moral responsibility, is probably racist and sexist, mistakes my childhood for the world, and so on. Entertaining though it is to critique that sort of critique, the real point is that at the end of the day my Englishness isn’t something that I can pick up and put down at will. Without wishing to dramatize, my Englishness is at the core of my personality and I am therefore barely able to reflect on it.

So far as I can tell from peering into the fog of discourse, the re-imagining of England is taking place at two levels; at the level of personal Englishness, and at the level of constitutional settlement. The idea of re-imagining personal Englishness feels threatening (it is an idea that is at the heart of the Government’s diversity strategy). In principle, any new constitutional settlement should respect the right of the English to express their distinctive Englishness (for example, as part of a federal Europe that gives the same protection to all European nations). The alternatives, which seem more likely to me, are either rawer expressions of Englishness or its final extinction.

Julius Whacket is the pen name of someone who lives with his family in Surrey. He can be found blogging on Out of England.

I live in north Gloucestershire, so my home territory is bounded by the limestone villages of the Cotswolds, the market gardens of the Vale of Evesham, Herefordshire’s apple orchards, and the ‘black and white’ villages of the southern part of Warwickshire. It’s the kind of place – tranquil, rural, steeped in history – that many people think of when they think of England, and the villages of Warwickshire, with their timber-framed, thatched houses were described as ‘Unmitigated England’ by Henry James in a phrase that has been much recycled since he coined it.

The first book I read about the area, John Russell’s Shakespeare’s Country, was also alert to this quintessential Englishness. Writing during World War II, Russell knew that this was a place where one could savour England’s history and tranquillity. He also knew that the war placed these very qualities under threat, and the region associated with Shakespeare stood for the whole country that soldiers, sailors and airmen were fighting for. Yet Russell, with the sharp eye that would make him a penetrating art critic, was also aware of the rich array of outside influences that helped shape this very English region. In Shakespeare’s area he could cite almshouses built by a Westphalian, a wool-weaving industry founded by Flemish artisans, Dutch armourers, Hungarian workers who created a glass industry, French craftsmen. Even the market gardens of Evesham were apparently started by an ambassador from Genoa.

All these contributions were part of networks of interaction stretching over hundreds of years. Slowly – these things do not happen overnight – Middle England’s industry, commerce, and society absorbed these influences, just as England’s art has benefited from all kinds of ideas from overseas. Shakespeare himself absorbed and transformed writers such as Plutarch, the Romantics devoured German philosophy and poetry, writers such as Rosetti were inspired by the poetry of Italy. In architecture, too, English builders have been transforming foreign styles of centuries, creating out of Norman models our own massive version of the Romanesque, out of French ideas the uniquely English Perpendicular Gothic of King’s College Chapel, out of the designs of Greeks, Romans, and Italians, new kinds of classicism. The most English of composers, Vaughan Williams, took lessons in France (he went to Ravel, he said, to acquire some ‘French polish’); our most popular drink, tea, comes via the empire from India; and if our stereotypical meal, roast beef, is local enough, it can be accompanied by red wine – and if our purse doesn’t stretch to St Emilion, we can resort to something like the curious hybrid tipple of Rumpole, Château Thames Embankment.

This island nation, in one way so isolated by the sea, has been hospitable to those who have made it across the waves and receptive to the cultures they brought with them. Norman masons, Huguenot cloth workers, those seeking asylum from Vietnam or Uganda, artists from Paris or Prague, have gained from living here, but those here already have gained from their presence too. So when I look at the typically English scene around me, I feel thankful for the diversity of culture and heritage that underlies it. The range is formidable: great Gothic ‘wool churches’, paid for by merchants whose trade made links with France or Flanders (one, Fairford, even contains stained glass made by Flemish glaziers); ruined monasteries inspired, and sometimes led, by monks from Rome or Burgundy; palatial country houses furnished with the aid of Italian tutors and guides and funded by agriculture in the native hills; factories started by immigrant Jews from central Europe or British citizens from the Indian subcontinent. Quintessential England, but with links all over the world.

Philip Wilkinson is a writer and blogger whose published books include The English Buildings Book, 50 Architecture Ideas You Really Need To Know, and What The Romans Did For Us. He lives in the Cotswolds and the Czech Republic.

I think the best thing I can contribute is a hymn that I wrote for the Gloucestershire Branch of The Royal Society of St. George’s Annual St. George’s Day Service in Gloucester Cathedral.

The Service fills the Cathedral each year with representatives from many strands of English life.
It was honoured with the presence of HRH The Duke of Gloucester last year.

‘Oh, Lord Whose Bounty Never Fails’ -.
Tune; Repton (Dear Lord and Father of Mankind)

1
O Lord, whose bounty never fails
We thank Thee for our land,
The gentle hills, the rolling dales .
Where lark Thy Glory sweetly hails
And thanks Thee for this realm.
And thanks Thee for this realm

2
The teeming seas; the fertile fields,
That give our daily bread;
The pastures green that cattle feed;
The oil and coal, the fuel we need,
Are gifts, all sent from Thee
Are gifts all sent from Thee.

3
A cradle of democracy,
Where man may speak his mind
And worship Thee, in manner free
O! Let us sing wholeheartedly
And thank Thee for this realm
And thank Thee for this realm

4
But freedom is a fragile flower
That needs such tender care.
We ask Thee for Thy help each hour
To keep it fresh in England’s bower
And safe for all to share
And safe for all to share.

copyright; The Royal Society of St. George, Gloucestershire Branch.

I suppose, as an Englishman, I share a generic mindset with any patriot of any country anywhere in the world. I’m driven by a deep sense of love of my country, a binding with it, a sense of identity with its very fabric and a longing for its commonweal and prosperity. Simultaneously, I feel a need to protect it, to spare it from embarrassment and to rail against the machinations of those who wish it harm. I realise there is nothing specifically English in these sentiments: I’m sure many non-English relate to this mindset too. Clearly, “Englishness” is more about a uniqueness, a set of idiosyncracies which collectively mark us out as being…. us.

We live south of Scotland and East of Wales on the island of Great Britain. From the genesis of our nationhood when Saxon and Angle intermarried and settled in the land that became England we have marked out this England as our ancestral land. We were one of the first European countries to unify and form a distinct identity. We have had this identity for over a thousand years and despite William the Conqueror, the Act of Union and latterly, the onslaught of Multiculturalism, our individual nationhood has remained strong. Moreover, this sense of history, tradition, nationhood pervades my sense of Self. This is reinforced by the physicality of my environs. I am reminded of my English roots in our interesting ancient buildings, our beautiful countryside and our dramatic coastline. The architecture of our towns and cities is a unique menagerie of styles that reflect some aspect of our national journey.

For me there is a solidity, borne of the state, that is attached to being English. Our institutions are ingrained in our sub-consciousness. Whether or not one agrees with them, our monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, Parliament, civil service, armed forces and Church all work well and generally to a high standard! Centuries of refinement and testing out have resulted in evolved structures of state that can be taken as a “given”. I know they are there and that they work: I don’t have to worry about coups d’etat, dictatorship, a corrupt judiciary or biased civil service. Within this framework I am free to speak my mind, I am free to make decisions, I am free to live a lifestyle that enables me to express myself and be happy (but with the proviso that I don’t harm others and abide by our laws). Basically, I can get on with my life as an Englishman unlike, alas, many in Africa, South America and Asia.

I’m proud to be English! We have certainly made our mark on the world. Our language is universal. Our literature, music, science, engineering, architecture, TV shows etc. have all, (disproportionately for such a small nation) influenced the world scene. We spawned some of the world’s firsts…modern science through Newton, Darwin and others, the agricultural and industrial revolutions, manifold inventions and innovations, wonderful literature and poetry and fantastic music. The list isn’t exhaustive. We also spawned the largest empire the world has ever seen which, in my opinion, was a force for great good in the world and, importantly, have since become the world’s greatest de-coloniser. We established workable democracies and viable economies in these former colonies and have nurtured them in nationhood with aid thereafter. We won two World Wars. We have fraternally stood by our allies in time of their darkest hours, witness Belgium, Poland and latterly the USA after 9/11. We continue to stand up for what is right in the world, even if this means loss of our dear compatriots. We continue to contribute, innovate, invent and influence.

I think we English are a people of character. We have a great sense of humour. We like to talk to one another: even strangers will utilise the topic of the weather to break the ice. As a conversion develops humour tends to creep in at some point. I notice that English people are more likely to use smiles and other aspects of facial expression to convey a positive contact when they meet others (notice how cold many Europeans are in contrast). We tend to be very accepting and polite to others. Our cultural etiquette demands that we see our faces and that we convey an openness, an acceptance of the other and that we should attempt to be civil. I’ve noticed, having travelled abroad, the absence of this politeness and friendliness. We can be eccentric and quirky. We facilitate self-expression and tend to accept the unusual. We can be seen as libertarian but there are cultural rules of engagement to ensure a propensity toward mutual respect.

Being English for me involves a good sense of the above. It is about connecting to one’s roots, being proud of our nation’s historical journey (warts and all!) and expressing one’s self to others in our unique way.

England is first the homeland of my birth, the land I grew up in, the land I love with a passion; indeed, if it were ever needed, the land I would die for.

Why? Because England is my land, it is the land of my forefathers who lie buried beneath its soil, and have done for generation after generation. It is the land of green rolling hills, and winding rivers. The land of the Yorkshire pudding, and Lanchashire hotpot, of the Cornish pasty, and the Cumbrian sausage. The land of the pie and eel shop, and the cream tea restaurants. The land of the fish and chippy. The land that gave the World, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Newton, Nightingale, Constable and Turner, Willberforce, Nelson, Wellington and Churchill, to name but a very few. The bluebell woods of Kent with their dappled sunshine. The thatched cottages of the Home Counties. The rugged coast of Cornwall, the beautiful moors and solace of where earth meets sky in quiet solitude of the Yorkshire dales. The bustle of the old London, and the real cockneys (of whom my mum was one). The maypole on a village green, morris dancers in the English countryside, and the game of bowls or cricket on a summer’s afternoon.

Unfortunately so many of our English children are not brought up knowing this as it is not taught to them any more in our schools. So many of them even feel ashamed to admit they are English because of the negative things they are taught about their own people (the English). Many do not seem to know that being British is not the same as being English – Britain is made up of four different countries, these being Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and England. England is a country in its own right just as the English people are a people in their own right, and they have their own culture. I am British yes, as I am part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but first and foremost I am English, as England was the land of my birth, and my parents were English.

I am proud to be English. Being English is not however just about being born here, it is about love. Love for England, love for the English people, love for our past, and love of our national heritage as a race – and that race is English. The very essence of England flows in your blood if you are truly English. It is not just history that makes us English or our people English, it is our very character, nature, culture that makes us Englishmen and women. It is a gut feeling, a certain knowledge and pride in our country and in our people. I feel that many see England as a soft touch. They mistake the English tolerance for weakness, and the English sense of fair play for stupidity; many have found out they have judged us English wrongly in that.

Yes we are fair minded and we are tolerant, but we have a lion as our emblem, that roars; and a bulldog, that when pushed too far bites.

England has contributed much to the world, and I am sick of hearing only of the bad we did. We did a lot of good too. As in railways, education, hospitals. England needs its own Parliament, just as the Scots have, the Welsh have and Northern Ireland has . Westminster is Britain’s Parliament, it is not England’s. England has no Parliament, and this is unjust and an affront to the English people . We do not want Scots, Welsh, or Northern Irish MPs deciding matters that only affect England, while they have their own elected represenatives to decide matters that affect them exclusively. Yes stay as a United Kingdom in matters of defence etc., but give us English our own Parliament. To end my small contribution on what England means to me, I will say this, I am English and proud that I am of English blood and of the English soil. I am entitled to that pride in my nation and people, the English.

When anyone asks me: ‘Are you British?’ I want to say “No! I’m English.’ Why? Because I’m proud to be English. I’m also proud to be British, but first, I’m English.

So what does being English mean? Yes, of course, you’re English if you are born in England, but not just that. To be proud to be English is to be proud of what England stands for. The problem is defining what England stands for. Less and less, I hear people saying. That’s too true in some ways. We seem to be giving away all the things that made England a wonderful place to live in. But that’s true of Britain as well.

Britain is a small collection of kingdoms. A united kingdom. But how united is it. Day on day we hear from the Scots who want independence from Britain. Ireland wants to reunite with the North. Wales has rediscovered its identity and its pride. Only England has yet to stand up and be counted.

Why is this, when we still have so much to be proud of? Not just nationalistic jingoism, but pride in the country and all it stands for and has stood for, for generations.

My family arrived in Britain in the early 1900’s. Britain took us in when so many would not. The family worked and thrived as most immigrants did in those days. They did not come for free handouts, but to flee persecution and build a new life. Over the decades since, our family members have become English. My wife and I live in a country village of thatched cottages and old world charm. A typically English village! It’s even got a village pond.

England has always been an entity within another entity. Being British has not stopped us being English, no matter how hard various political parties have tried to prevent the feeling.

Being English is more of an emotional thing than a practical one. You can’t say it’s about the language barrier because the Cornish have their own language and regional jargons all would seem to divide us. But it does not divide us. If anything it unites us as English men and women.

The industrial revolution started in England and swept the world. England’s empire was second to none in size or wealth. OK, that empire is gone, now. Like all empires, they have had their day. Maybe Great Britain has had its day, too. But should England be lumped in with that? No! Undoubtedly – no!

England will still have much to offer for centuries, if allowed to do so. English culture and heritage was once its pride. It can be so again. We only need a voice. A voice to equal the Scots, the Irish and the Welsh.

We need an English Parliament to speak up for the English. Without it we will descend into mediocrity. We do not deserve that. Not now! Not ever!

The EU denies our heritage as it does the other member states but, while the others kick against the demand of the centralised government, Britain drags England into line. Our tail between our legs.

Everything that we once prided ourselves in our Englishness, has become anathema to our masters. While France and Germany flout the rules they don’t like, Britain accepts. But nowhere is that acceptance felt more than in England.

For we are being denied our very identity.

Of course change is always painful. We’ve dragged ourselves, kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century but if we can keep it England’s twenty-first century, we can grow with it.

We must always take in the down trodden of other countries. That is part of our custom. However, taking in all who can get on a boat and sponge off us is not good economics. Nor is it right and proper. Our very Englishness will be swamped and overridden.

We, who love England, want to keep on loving it. If the rest of the world don’t like that in us, we’ve lived with that before. We can live with it again.