ENGLAND: HISTORY OF A NATION

English history is a vast and complicated story, made more so since 1707 by the question of where 'English' ends and 'British' begins. A history of England, no matter how long, has to be a matter of selection and focus. The first anonymous occupants of a nameless landscape to the regional government proposals of New Labour is a daunting. The descendants of those first settlers – enormously increased in numbers, added to by the ceaseless immigration of a great variety of peoples – still live in England. Continuity and change, opposing but also complementary forces, underlie the sequence of events. The pull of these two great forces is also seen in the growth of English society and the evolution of English government. Conservatism (with a small 'c') has always been a great latent power in English life. But so has been the urge to question, to do things differently. Change has often been made in the name of restoring the past, as in 1660, but that can never be quite achieved. Defenders of the old ways have often, like the Duke of Wellington, found themselves reluctant proposers of reform. Though often a source of division and destruction, this two-way pull has been, in the long term, fruitful for England and, because England has at various times been highly influential in world affairs, of concern and value to the rest of the world.

For some historians, the island position of the English is a defining factor in forming their attitude to the rest of the world and to the continent of Europe in particular. Others have remarked that the English Channel was always a less formidable barrier than the Alps. What is really important is the sense of England's resources. The country is best seen as a little continent in itself. For many centuries it was self-sufficient in the essentials of life. It has wide fertile plains, rolling grassy uplands, a long coastline, and hills that hide long, remote valleys. There are lakes, fenlands and bare mountains. It has rivers broad and slows enough for navigation, and once had great forests. Its capital was a trading town before the Romans came, and grew to be the world's most populous city. And a population of correspondingly varied attitude and outlook occupied its 50,397 square miles (130,478 sq km). To the north and the west were other countries, smaller in population, different in outlook, wilder in landscape and poorer in resources. Scotland, Ireland, Wales defined themselves in conflict with England, but unlike them, that small continent, with its variety of human habitats and possibilities for human experience, could be an all-in-all for its people. Nothing, and nowhere else were needed. (And in the twentieth century, as in the nineteenth, the moments of 'standing alone' were those when the English felt most distinctly themselves.) Such variety within a small compass explains why the English as a nation can seem so elusive, a 'secret people' in G.K. Chesterton's words. There is no single English type, but rather a whole range of them, often with conflicting characteristics. It is as English to put on a red coat and hunt foxes as it is to hold up a placard and block the road in protest against blood sports. All this has made for an independent-minded, versatile and creative people, though not, perhaps, one that finds it easy to adjust to membership of a large supranational union. In this respect England is again different from its British neighbour-nations.