Abstract
Only fifteen years ago I published an essay called The Sense of Identity of the Indigenous British' which was among the first to draw attention to the confusion of Englishness with Britishness among the English. I noted the abundance of books on national identities (Irish, Scottish, and Welsh certainly) other than Englishness. I pointed to subject catalogues of major libraries as bibliographic proof. And I offered as explanation for this strange fact that historically the main political business of the English governing class since 1707 had been holding the United Kingdom together; therefore to develop a state cult of English nationalism, even as the time when everyone else was beating the drum (notably 1793, 1845 an 1919), would have been counter productive. I even praised the old gentlemanly Tories, as distinct from the new arriviste Thatcherites, for being historically aware that it was a United Kingdom and not England writ-large. Not for them Thatcher's famous and spontaneous invention of a country called 'Here-in-England-oh-sorry-I meanScotland'.
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