that I could be so callous as to write a book exclusively about Englishness.
But this book is about Englishness – or, as I decided to describe it to myself, living Englishly.
I am no social scientist or historian. I have no academic credentials in ‘Englishness’; in fact the subject has already been tackled by people far more learned and academic than myself – both Jeremy Paxman and Kate Fox have written brilliantly about Englishness. But what I do have is a burning passion, a drive and, most importantly, a pride in my identity. I love to celebrate this identity in all its quirkiness.
Cheese rolling is a good example of a national trait that rather accurately describes the character of Englishness – eccentricity. The dictionary definitions are pretty concise: according to the Collins English Dictionary, ‘Eccentricity is unusual behaviour that other people consider strange.’ The Oxford English Dictionary, meanwhile, defines ‘eccentric’ as ‘(of a person or their behaviour) unconventional and slightly strange.’
And, like a moth to a light, I have long been attracted to eccentricity. The child of an actress, it is fair to say that I grew up around a fair amount of oddball behaviour. My mother would often meet me at the school gates wearing a wild wig, heavy make-up and with some new and unrecognizable accent as she immersed herself in whatever her current role happened to be.
My immediate reaction was one of embarrassment. Like many children, I wanted to be a sheep and follow the crowd. I didn’t want to be different, to stand out.
But as I became older I found myself drawn to the unusual. Strange places and people. I remember meeting the Englishwoman who ran Helga’s Folly in Sri Lanka, and who walked around wearing black lace escorted by a dozen Dalmatians; or the British spy living in the Costa Rican jungle with tales of tea with Colonel Gaddafi and riding in tanks with Saddam Hussein; or peculiar aristocrats like Lord Bath and his dozens of ‘wifelets’.
I found myself drawn to eccentric landscapes like Dungeness with its crazy, Daliesque architecture, or competing in an array of eccentric fixtures from the Brambles cricket match in the middle of the Solent to the World Stinging-Nettle Eating Championships.
Does that make me an eccentric? I don’t think so, but there is most certainly one within. The joy of eccentricity is that you don’t care. Look at the Fulfords, the aristocratic family made famous by Channel 4’s The Fu@£ing Fulfords for an example of really not giving a F@£k. I am pretty confident that I will eventually become a bow-tie-wearing eccentric surrounded by dozens of dogs. It really is only a matter of time.
Eccentricity aside, I consider myself a proud Englishman. I was born in Marylebone, London, the capital of England. I am a Land Rover-driving, Labrador-owning, Marmite-eating, tea-drinking, wax-jacketed, Queen-loving Englishman. And yet technically I’m not. I’m actually an imposter. My grandfather was Scottish and my father is Canadian. In all honesty, I am a mongrel. A mixed breed with no obvious authority to write a book about Englishness, And yet I have lived my life being described as the quintessential Englishman. Over time some of those traits and characteristics have perhaps become exaggerated. I blame travel. Despite my childhood adoption of a few Canadian pronunciations, my accent and dialect has changed according to my location. Believe it or not, I haven’t always sounded like this. Like what? you might ask. Well, for those who have never heard me talk, I am a little bit Posh. Correction. I’m not posh but I sound posh. RP – Received Pronunciation – is the official term. IT MEANS I PRO-NOUNCE EVERY WORD AND SYL-A-BYL CLEARLY.
The first changes to my accent came when I went to live in Ecuador, South America. For the first time, I became proud of my heritage. Subconsciously it was probably also an effort to distance myself from America and Americans. I lived with a beautiful family called the Salazars, and Mauro, my Ecuadorian ‘father’, was obsessed with all things English. ‘Tell me about hooligans?’ he would ask over a plate of beans and rice. ‘And what about the Queen?’ He was obsessed with Benny Hill and Oasis and Four Weddings and a Funeral.
He would spend hours quizzing me on the motherland, and I suppose I began subliminally to morph into a sort of Hugh Grant caricature. Several further years in Central and South America and I became fixated on my heritage, hoarding jars of Marmite and boxes of PG Tips. It was only when I returned to give a talk at my former school in Dorset that one of my teachers commented on the changes to my accent.
I genuinely believe that it is all the time away, overseas, exploring and adventuring that has given me time to think and explore my national identity. Sometimes, when you are too close to something, it is difficult to reflect honestly; often, we don’t like what we see.
Let’s be frank: England itself doesn’t have a glowing halo when it comes to colonial and imperial history. Indeed, we are rightly embarrassed by much of our past. And now we face turbulent times in which we, as the wider nation, have been forced to ask ourselves who we are. What began with an emotionally charged independence referendum for Scotland ended with Great Britain’s decision to leave the European Union. In the light of all of that, what does it mean to be English?
It is a loaded subject and a loaded book to write, full of pitfalls and taboo subjects that cause upset and irritation. It is why I occasionally feel I should never have written it. It is the reason I have agonized over it. It has given me sleepless nights.
Of course, it is easy to paint a national character with brushstrokes of stereotyping, and I will make no apology for my effort to explore many of these traits. After I had got beyond the stream of abuse from Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish occasioned by writing a book about Englishness, the character traits people suggested most often on social media were queuing, Marmite, umbrellas, the Queen, tea, fish and chips, Wimbledon, not complaining, bad teeth, dry humour, wax jackets, muddy Glastonbury, politeness, and the weather.
All of them iconically English, but it is the weather that has fascinated me the most. It is such a huge part of our national identity. It dominates our conversations. It is the subject of endless fascination and has, in my humble opinion, been the catalyst for so much of what makes England and the English what we are.
Again, if I’m honest I wanted to write a book about the weather. I wanted to explore our complex relationship with the weather – something we love to hate. The more I explored and researched, the more I became convinced that it is indeed the weather that has come to define us as a nation. Almost everything, every national trait and quirk and foible, can be attributed in some form to the weather. Okay, sometimes the link can be pretty tenuous, but it’s always there. So, often in this book, the chapters will explore a topic and our climate will be lurking in the background, lighting the subject with its changeable, unpredictable presence.
When I was a young boy, there was a song that we used to play over and over. It was one of my mother’s songs from the film Half a Sixpence, in which she starred alongside Tommy Steele. I can still remember every word:
If the rain’s got to fall, let it fall on Wednesday,
Tuesday, Monday, any day but Sunday
Sunday’s the day when it’s got to be fine,
’Cause that’s when I’m meeting my girl.
If the rain’s got to fall, let it fall on Maidstone,
Kingston, Oakstone, anywhere but Folkestone,
Folkestone’s the place where it’s got to be fine.
’Cause that’s where I’m meeting my girl.
What could be wetter or damper
Than
