Hoping for Englishness

England - A Short Description

Britain, consisting of the two kingdoms of England and Scotland, is the largest island in the world, encompassed by the ocean, the German and French seas. The largest and southern part of it is England, so named from the Angli, who quitting the little territory yet called Angel in the kingdom of Denmark, took possession here. It is governed by its own King, who owns no superior but God. It is divided into thirty-nine counties, to which thirteen in Wales were added by Henry VIII., the first who distributed that principality into counties; over each of these, in times of danger, a lord lieutenant, nominated by the King, presides with an unlimited power. Every year some gentleman, an inhabitant of the place, is appointed sheriff; his office is to collect the public moneys, to raise fines, or to make seizures, and account for it to the Treasury; to attend upon the judges, and put their sentence in execution; to empanel the jury, who sit upon facts, and return their verdict to the judges (who in England are only such of the law, and not of the fact); to convey the condemned to execution, and to dertermine in lesser causes, for the greater are tried by the judges, formerly called travelling judges of assize; these go their circuits through the counties twice every year to hear causes, and pronounce sentence upon prisoners.

source: www. visionofbritain.org.uk

England by Marianne Moore

The following poem is by Marianne Moore and is a very nice description of england.

England

with its baby rivers and little towns, each with its abbey or its cathedral;
with voices - one voice perhaps, echoing through the transept - the
criterion of suitability and convenience; and Italy
with its equal shores - contriving an epicureanism
from which the grossness  has been extracted,

and Greece with its goat and its gourds,
the nest of modified illusions: and France,
the “chrysalis of the nocturnal butterfly,”
in whose products, mystery of construction
diverts one from what was originally one’s object -
substance at the core: and the East with its snails, its emotional

shorthand and jade cockroaches, its rock crystal and its imperturbability,
all of museum quality: and America where there
is the little old ramshackle victoria in the south,
where cigars are smoked on the street in the north;
where there are no proofreaders, no silk-worms, no digressions;
the wild man’s land; grass-less, linksless, languageless country in which letters are written
not in Spanish, not in Greek, not in Latin, not in shorthand,
but in plain American which cats and dogs can read!
The letter a in psalm and calm when
pronounced with the sound of a in candle, is very noticeable, but

why should continents of misapprehension
have to be accounted for by the fact?
Does it follow that because there are poisonous toadstools
which resemble mushrooms, both are dangerous?
Of mettlesomeness which may be mistaken for appetite,
of heat which may appear to be haste,
no conclusionns may be drawn.

To have misapprehended the matter is to have confessed that one has not loooked far enough.
The sublimated wisdom of China, Egyptian discernment,
the cataclysmic torrent of emotion
compressed in the verbs of the Hebrew language,
the books of the man who is able to say,
“I envy nobody but him, and him only,
who catches more fish than
I do” - the flower and fruit of all that noted superiority
if not stumbled upon in America,
must one imagine that it is not there?
It has never been confined to one locality.

For more poems about England visit the website of the coolest englishman on the planet.

Brief Synopsis of This Is England by The Coolest Englishman On The Planet

The movie “This Is England” is set in England in July of 1983. The plot centres around the Skinhead subculture – Skinheads get their label because they shave their heads. It gives them a look of violence and aggression. The identity, belonging and culture are at the heart of the film.

There is an irony in the film and indeed the Skinhead culture that the music most often associated with Skinheads has its roots in Jamaican reggae music. The early non-racist stance of the Skinheads is disturbed by the arrival from prison of an older and more aggressive Skinhead, known as Combo. The film was directed and written by Shane Meadows who also directed films such as Dead Man’s Shoes and A Room for Romeo Brass.

For further information about England visit www.tonyradford.com the website of Tony Radford the coolest Englishman on the planet.

William Blake’s Jerusalem

The following words by William Blake are famous throughout the world because they are set to music and sung as the hymn Jerusalem

This is a very famous poem about England

The poem is really quite interesting from the theological point of view because It is quite clear from the Bible that Jesus remain local to Palestine.

Jerusalem

And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon England’s mountains green?

And was the holy Lamb of God

On England’s pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here

Among these dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!

Bring me my arrows of desire!

Bring me my spear!

O clouds unfold!

Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand

Till we have built Jerusalem

In England’s green and pleasant land.

Those lines are very well known because they form the lyric of the hymn Jerusalem.

Englishness And The English Identity - First Ideas

We are looking at the concept of Englishness. It is fair to say that England is a special nation with something of a national identity crisis. The English are often puzzled when asked if to choose between describing themselves as ‘English’ or ‘British’. It seems as though the English have no national identity.

The country of England co-exists with Wales and Scotland on the island of Britain, with England being the largest country of the three. Together with the people of Northern Ireland, Wales, England and Scotland in total constitute the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, i.e. the UK. The nation of the British people is Britain. However, not all British citizens live on the island of Britain. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom and its people are British. Geographically Northern Ireland occupies a small part of Ireland. Physically speaking the majority of Ireland is the territory of the Irish Republic, i.e. Eire. Thus England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland together form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, more commonly known as the UK. Note that technically speaking Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom but not part of Great Britain..

Historically the English are an ethnic group who are native to the land of England, who speak the English language. It was during the early medieval period that the specific identity of the English as a people is thought to have arisen. Genetically speaking the English are a mix of Northern European invaders and settlers including the Angles, the Saxons the Jutes and the Vikings, who co-existed with the indigenous Britons. Southern Europeans came with the Romans and the Norman invasion of 1066 has left a French legacy. Migrants from Wales, Scotland and Ireland also came to England. In later centuries there were influxes from many other countries, particularly from the Commonwealth and other European nations. These peoples and these events created what was to become known as England and all ultimately contribute to that mix of values known as Englishness. However it is not just our mixed roots that give this identity crisis however but that is the subject of another article.