ABSTRACT
Englishness feels a fragile identity. It relies on nostalgia for emotional power, feeds off our childhood memories of smaller, less abstract forms of belonging - to a household, neighbourhood, landscape. Patriotism draws on these images (part memories, part fantasies), exploiting our homesickness; which is probably why I’m immune to it - or would like to be. But then I have no sense of being English that I can separate from my early experience of class.
