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What does it mean to you to be English?

Lush green countryside, rolling hills, rain and lots of it, slate grey skies, coastal towns, traditions (Sunday roast, full English, fish n chips, sticks of rock, afternoon tea!), Ale in the winter (mainly), Cider in the summer (mainly), Royal Family, that London, accents, culture, music - so much talent for such a small island, free speech, protests, multicultural, hiking, pubs, rugby, football, cricket, queues, moaning, the union jack, Jerusalem (hymn), national anthem, stone walls, the dawn chorus...

I could go on… :)

There are plenty of negatives too, but we all know what they are as they're currently everywhere and I figured there’s plenty of other threads to vent about those on ;)
 
I don't regard myself as English as such. I'm a British citizen, that's just a fact. It doesn't mean anything as such. Born in Yorkshire to parents of English and Irish descent, I regard myself as more European, and I very much played that card before The Great Idiocy of 2016.
 
I identify very strongly with being from Yorkshire, being English is somewhat ambivalent in terms of my feelings.

I do get peed off with negativity about this country, the assumption that other places are better is always a simplistic one.

As a nation we are great at creativity, design & the arts, less good making stuff.
 
O, to be in England
Now that April 's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England—now!

And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossom'd pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray's edge—
That 's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower
—Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!
 
I thought it would last my time -
The sense that, beyond the town,
There would always be fields and farms,
Where the village louts could climb
Such trees as were not cut down;
I knew there'd be false alarms

In the papers about old streets
And split level shopping, but some
Have always been left so far;
And when the old part retreats
As the bleak high-risers come
We can always escape in the car.

Things are tougher than we are, just
As earth will always respond
However we mess it about;
Chuck filth in the sea, if you must:
The tides will be clean beyond.
- But what do I feel now? Doubt?

Or age, simply? The crowd
Is young in the M1 cafe;
Their kids are screaming for more -
More houses, more parking allowed,
More caravan sites, more pay.
On the Business Page, a score

Of spectacled grins approve
Some takeover bid that entails
Five per cent profit (and ten
Per cent more in the estuaries): move
Your works to the unspoilt dales
(Grey area grants)! And when

You try to get near the sea
In summer . . .
It seems, just now,
To be happening so very fast;
Despite all the land left free
For the first time I feel somehow
That it isn't going to last,

That before I snuff it, the whole
Boiling will be bricked in
Except for the tourist parts -
First slum of Europe: a role
It won't be hard to win,
With a cast of crooks and tarts.

And that will be England gone,
The shadows, the meadows, the lanes,
The guildhalls, the carved choirs.
There'll be books; it will linger on
In galleries; but all that remains
For us will be concrete and tyres.

Most things are never meant.
This won't be, most likely; but greeds
And garbage are too thick-strewn
To be swept up now, or invent
Excuses that make them all needs.
I just think it will happen, soon.
 

Maggie Holland’s original version of A Place Called England​

I rode out on a bright May morning like a hero in a song,
Looking for a place called England, trying to find where I belong.
Couldn’t find the old flood meadow or the house that I once knew;
No trace of the little river or the garden where I grew.

I saw town and I saw country, motorway and sink estate;
Rich man in his rolling acres, poor man still outside the gate;
Retail park and burger kingdom, prairie field and factory farm,
Run by men who think that England’s only a place to park their car.

But as the train pulled from the station through the wastelands of despair
From the corner of my eye a brightness filled the filthy air.
Someone’s grown a patch of sunflowers though the soil is sooty black,
Marigolds and a few tomatoes right beside the railway track.

Down behind the terraced houses, in between the concrete towers,
Compost heaps and scarlet runners, secret gardens full of flowers.
Meeta grows her scented roses right beneath the big jets’ path.
Bid a fortune for her garden—Eileen turns away and laughs.

So rise up, George, and wake up, Arthur, time to rouse out from your sleep.
Deck the horse with sea-green ribbons, drag the old sword from the deep.
Hold the line for Dave and Daniel as they tunnel through the clay,
While the oak in all its glory soaks up sun for one more day.

Come all you at home with freedom whatever the land that gave you birth,
There’s room for you both root and branch as long as you love the English earth.
Room for vole and room for orchid, room for all to grow and thrive;
Just less room for the fat landowner on his arse in his four-wheel drive.

For England is not flag or Empire, it is not money, it is not blood.
It’s limestone gorge and granite fell, it’s Wealden clay and Severn mud,
It’s blackbird singing from the May tree, lark ascending through the scales,
Robin watching from your spade and English earth beneath your nails.

So here’s two cheers for a place called England, sore abused but not yet dead;
A Mr Harding sort of England hanging in there by a thread.
Here’s two cheers for the crazy diggers, now their hour shall come around;
We shall plant the seed they saved us, common wealth and common ground.
 
From another perspective, to be English is perhaps to be a mongrel. I mean, I’m aware of our northern European-ness in terms of build and perhaps ease of learning languages in comparison to the difficulty for many with the Latin languages. However I’ve never thought of us as a pure indigenous people with our Heinz 57 ancestry of invaders, our travelling and immigration adding to the mix. It’s left me mildly amused about racism as we have a lot of mixed origins in us. Perhaps that’s where you Scots, Welsh and Irish are more pure.

Remarkably despite this and those who embarrass us when overseas I do think to be English or in fact British is to be friendly, welcoming, tolerant and interested in others. Even though I’m not sure we’re seen in this way amidst our moaning and territorial pride.

In my life a large part of England died when my father died in 2006. I grew up with family stories of that early 20th century era, the great wars and all between, the decades of simpler life and all those things that are British light music, the simpler bbc and the wireless, proper countryside and quality vegetables and bread. It’s hard to describe but that illusion was gone in instant like the hard closing of a book and left quite a vacuum for me. Of course, I doubt it was all really like it anyway but that’s the England I had in my head.

I’ve always considered myself British by the way despite how much some folk from the other British countries seem to dislike us.
 
Where I come from the attitude has always been “we‘re not English, we‘re scouse“.

Having moved to Scotland after Uni and never lived in England thereafter, I consider myself Scottish and very thankful for it.

Whats to like about:
Abject fealty to the royalty and aristo’s
The Tory party
Worship of a glorious past long gone, a country built on the back of slaves and colonial exploitation.
English exceptionalism, other places have nice countryside too you know.
The whole country based around what’s good for London
Right wing arseholes, especially the thick working class ones.

Apart from that it’s a great place :rolleyes:
 
Ok. What is it you are proud of? What is it about being English that is distinct and worthy of pride?
 
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