Everything You Know About England is Wrong E-Book

Matt Brown

• Herausgeber: Batsford
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 203

Beschreibung

A highly entertaining read for anyone interested in English history and culture, this great myth-busting book takes you on a great ride through history and the national character. Think we're the land of Punch and Judy and Morris Dancing? Think again as both traditions started in southern Europe. Love Winston Churchill's wartime speeches? Well, they were recorded by an actor. Packed with details on real English history, the book explodes a range of national myths from bluebirds in Dover (they are not indigenous European birds) to the origin of the Cornish pasty (they might have been invented in London), from our stiff upper lip (an Americanism) to where you can spend a Scottish bank note. English arts, entertainment, food, drink, kings and queens, traditions as well as politics are all covered to give you a fascinating insight into the true England. Includes an additional chapter on Scottish, Welsh and Irish myths that we've been peddling in England for decades and need to be laid to rest. 

Leseprobe

Everything You Know About England is Wrong

Everything You Know About England is Wrong

Matt Brown

Contents

Introduction

This green and pleasant land

England, Britain and the UK are all the same thing

England was first settled at the end of the last ice age, 12,000 years ago

Land’s End to John o’ Groats is the longest distance in the UK

Hadrian’s Wall marks the border with Scotland

The River Severn is the longest waterway in England

An English city must have a cathedral

Southern England ends at the Watford Gap

The Shard is the tallest structure in the country

Milton Keynes is awful

Around the counties

The machinery of state

The monarch is not allowed to vote, and other royal restrictions

The monarch’s official home is Buckingham Palace

The Union Jack should be called the Union Flag when not at sea

The royal family are the epitome of Englishness

‘God Save the Queen’ is the English national anthem

Every British citizen has the right to vote

Scottish banknotes are legal tender in England

English tradition and character

Punch and Judy is a fine old English tradition

‘Ring-a-Roses’ is a poem about the Great Plague

It’s always raining in England and this is all people talk about

England is a nation of tea drinkers

The English love warm, flat beer

Everybody in England enjoys a good scone

The English all eat huge fry-ups for breakfast

England’s glorious fauna and flora

Historical bloopers

King Harold, last of the Anglo-Saxon kings, was killed at Hastings

The two-finger salute derives from the Battle of Agincourt

Henry VIII had six wives

Eight King Henrys have been crowned in England

Walter Raleigh discovered tobacco

Charles I was the last monarch to be put to death

All British women got the vote in 1918

England has not been invaded since 1066

The great misunderstood characters of England

Queen Boudicca or Boudica or Boadicea or Boudicea

Lady Godiva, naked equestrian

St George was a proper English hero

King Arthur, once and future king of England

King Alfred, the burner of cakes

Robin Hood and his merry men

Dick Turpin, dashing thug

Winston Churchill’s bon mots

And the rest of the kingdom

Are you pronouncing it wrong?

Other myths and misnomers

Let’s start a new wave of false facts

Index

Acknowledgements

Other titles in the series

Introduction

‘I have great respect for the U.K. United Kingdom. Great respect. People call it Britain. They call it Great Britain. They used to call it England, different parts.’

Donald Trump, 3 August 2018.

Nobody quite gets England, least of all the 45th President of the United States. It is a nation without a national anthem; a country but not a sovereign state. England is proud to have spread democracy around the world, and yet has no written constitution and no devolved parliament of its own. England’s patron saint never visited the country, nor indeed, heard the name England. It is a country of contrasts, conflicts and counterexamples. Everything you know about England is wrong.

This is the seventh volume of my series addressing common myths and misconceptions. It comes at a time when English and British identities are in flux. Withdrawal from the European Union places the country in uncertain waters. Nobody knows what lies ahead. But it could also be argued that most of us don’t really know what went before.

Even the most cherished facts about our country turn out to be dubious. Did Henry VIII really have six wives? Is the River Severn England’s longest waterway? Are you sure you know how to pronounce Shrewsbury? England is a land of contradictions, crying out to be unpacked. Everything You Know About England Is Wrong seeks to do just that, and put a smile on your face.

My chief focus is England, but I do tackle wider myths where appropriate. For example, the Union Jack flutters on a flagpole of misconceptions. It is a British emblem rather than an English one, but does not seem out of place in a book about England. Conversely, I’ve shied away from myths that are specific to the capital. Anyone wanting to know why the Tower of London won’t fall if the ravens flee, or why Big Ben isn’t the name of the bell should seek out Everything You Know About London Is Wrong.

I’ve also avoided material on Britain’s place within Europe. The Brexit process has suffered so many turns, twists and reverses that any attempt to cover it in these pages would be futile and quickly rendered out of date. This is primarily a book about culture and history, and so I’ve left the politicians from its pages. Except for Winston Churchill. And Donald Trump.

Some topics I will not tackle, because they are stupid, banal and obvious – better left to Internet listicles. Nobody thinks England is shrouded in fog anymore. The notion that nobody cares about food in England is dismissed by a casual browsing of daytime television. We don’t all talk in Cockney rhyming slang, or have terrible teeth, or live off jellied eels and Yorkshire pudding. You won’t find too many stereotypes in this book. Except for the British love of tea and scones … because that’s actually quite interesting.

As with every book in this series, the idea is to have a lot of fun while cocking a snook at received wisdom. The things we get wrong stick with us far more surely than those we get right, so don’t be disheartened if a long-held ‘fact’ gets overturned or a squirrelled-away titbit turns out to be duff. To err is human and, in this age of encroaching Artificial Intelligence, we need to cherish our errant ways all the more.

So, turn the page, lie back and think of England. Or Britain. Or the UK. And let the nitpicking begin!

This green and pleasant land

What exactly is England? What are its boundaries, longest river and tallest building? Let’s start with some definitions.

England, Britain and the UK are all the same thing

Why does the UK field English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish football teams, but enter the Olympics as ‘Team GB’? Why do international licence plate codes mark the country as GB and not UK? Is London the capital of England, Great Britain, the United Kingdom, or all of these? Ireland’s not British, but it is in the British Isles – what gives?

The tangled web of territories is a constant source of confusion to outsiders, but also to residents and even authorities. When Ordnance Survey – the national mapping agency of the United Kingdom – published an online guide to the different terminology, it had to make at least two corrections after readers spotted errors. It’s like explaining the offside rule in football: you might think you’ve got the basics nailed, but numerous details, exceptions and sensitivities must also be taken into account. Like a mad fool, I shall now attempt to unpick those differences.

Let’s start at the top. The widest term people use, when prodding this part of the globe, is ‘the British Isles’. The British Isles is usually intended as a geographic term, encompassing all the islands and territories off the north-west coast of France. England, Scotland, Wales, both parts of Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Orkneys, the Channel Islands … if it’s coloured green and surrounded by blue, it’s part of the British Isles.

The term might be easy to understand, but it’s loaded with political confrontation. Ireland was once a part of the United Kingdom, but achieved independence (as the Irish Free State) in 1922. Irish people may quite understandably wince at the phrase ‘the British Isles’. It may be used with purely geographic intent, but it’s hard to escape the suggestion of overlordship inherent in the adjective. Unfortunately, nobody has ever invented a satisfying alternative. Suggestions include ‘The Isles’, ‘the Atlantic Archipelago’ and ‘the Anglo-Celtic Isles’. All of these come with their own problems. Careful writers and broadcasters tend to say ‘the UK and Ireland’ for most purposes.

Let’s dig down to the next level. The British-Irish Isles (to use another alternative) contain just two sovereign states. These are the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. The ROI is easy enough to understand. It comprises about four-fifths of the island of Ireland. The remaining one-fifth is Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. To introduce a note of confusion even here, people from anywhere on the island may refer to themselves as Irish first and foremost, depending on political views and personal taste.

The United Kingdom unites four countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. None of this quartet counts as a sovereign state, though the latter three have devolved law-making assemblies. The first whiff of a United Kingdom came in 1603, when James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne as James I. The countries then shared a monarch for 100 years until the Acts of Union (1707) merged them into a single state, the Kingdom of Great Britain. It wasn’t until 1801 and union with Ireland that the phrase United Kingdom became commonplace.

You see how it’s already getting a little complicated? Brace yourself, for we’re now coming to the meat of it. Great Britain is the trickiest concept to get one’s head around, and that’s because it has two definitions. The first is geographic. Great Britain is simply the largest island in the region – the chewed-croissant of England, Scotland and Wales. Based on this meaning, places like the Isle of Wight and the Scottish islands (the croissant crumbs, should we pursue this weak analogy) are not part of the island of Great Britain. More commonly, though, Great Britain is used in its political context. Here, it’s understood to mean anything that’s part of the UK but isn’t Northern Ireland.

Let’s just recap by zooming out again. The nations of England, Scotland and Wales club together to form Great Britain. Add Northern Ireland and you get the sovereign state of the United Kingdom. Hang around with the Republic of Ireland, and we have the British Isles (or whatever politically neutral term you wish to use). And that’s the crux of it, at least to beginner’s level.

Already, I can hear people screaming ‘What about the Isle of Man, you prat?’. What, indeed. This small island, about the size of Leeds, lies in the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and northern England. It is a political anomaly. Mann (as it’s more succinctly called, though note the double ‘n’) is not part of the United Kingdom or Great Britain*. It is a Crown Dependency, a possession of the British monarch, who holds the title of Lord of Mann. Residents of Mann are considered British citizens, with passports that say as much. However, the island has never been affiliated with the European Union. Its residents were never able to work in other EU countries without permits.

Two other Crown Dependencies lurk to the south of Great Britain. The Bailiwicks of Guernsey and Jersey – otherwise known as the Channel Islands – have a similar status to Mann. They are self-governing, and not part of the UK or Great Britain, but those who live there are considered British citizens. Smaller channel islands, such as Alderney and Sark, fall within one of the two bailiwicks.

We’re almost there, but a final mention should go to 14 other territories around the world who claim a particularly close relationship to the parent country. These are the British Overseas Territories. Simply put, they are fragments of the British Empire that never declared independence. Like the Crown Dependencies, they are not part of the United Kingdom, but rely on the parent state for defence and international representation, and also look to the British monarch as head of state. I say ‘look to’, but three of the territories have no permanent population to do any looking (British Antarctic Territory, British Indian Ocean Territory and South Georgia and the south Sandwich Islands).

The best known BOTs include Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar. The most unusual is surely Akrotiri and Dhekelia on the island of Cyprus. The territory comprises three non-connected areas that live in messy cohabitation with Cypriot enclaves and the UN Buffer Zone that divides the island. It is the only territory under British sovereignty to use the Euro as its official currency.

So there we have it. What a dog’s dinner of definitions. And, bear in mind that the careful, pedantic reader will perceive at least three inaccuracies. Nobody writing about this stuff ever quite gets away with it because many of the terms are open to interpretation and alternative readings. Even the authorities get bogged down in this nominative entanglement. Take ‘Team GB’, the brand under which British athletes compete at the Olympic Games. The term was adopted at the turn of the century to unite athletes from disparate sports. Critics point out, rightly, that the name alienates athletes from Northern Ireland, which is not part of Great Britain. Team UK would be a more inclusive term, but that doesn’t sound nearly as pleasing to the ear. Besides, that brand would itself ignore potential competitors from the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. Team UK+CD-BOT is hardly an option, at least until we start selecting artificial intelligences for competition.

Avoiding such absurdities is one of the many reasons I’ve decided to focus the majority of this book on England rather than Britain or the UK. You know where you are with England – a straightforward, well-understood country. Surely there’s little scope for misunderstanding? …

England was first settled at the end of the last ice age, 12,000 years ago

Before we get on to comfortable, familiar, modern England, we should first look back to the country’s ultimate origins. For how long have humans strolled this green and pleasant land and called the place home? The intuitive answer, if you think about it, is to assume these lands were colonized at the end of the last ice age*, some 12,000 years ago. Before that time, much of the island was covered in ice sheets. It would have been a forbidding landscape both for humans and their prey.

Britain seems to have been bereft of inhabitants during this chilly period. Humans only arrived in numbers once the ice had retreated. The first settlers ventured over here 12 millennia ago or, to put it in more familial terms, during the time of your great-(x 500)-grandparents.

They did not need to construct boats or navigate the English Channel. With much water still locked up in ice at northern latitudes, sea levels were lower than today. Britain was connected to continental Europe by a large plain known as Doggerland. Our ancestors simply walked across. Rising sea levels swept over this land bridge, but perhaps not as long ago as you might imagine. Britain eventually became an island about 6,500BCE, or 3,000 years before the earliest works at Stonehenge. Despite being cut off from the mainland – without so much as a referendum – the region we now call England remained populated right up to, including, and hopefully beyond the Brexit era.

Britain, then, has supported a permanent population for about 12,000 years. Yet there were still older ‘Britons’ who settled these isles long before. In fact, the human prehistory of Britain stretches much further back in time – almost a million years.

Over such unfathomable ages, the climate changed many times, from icy and uninhabitable to reasonably balmy. Whenever the ice retreated, people moved in. The earliest recorded humans were not of our species. Flint tools from Happisburgh* in north-east Norfolk have been dated to at least 814,000 years ago, possibly much older.

They were created by a species of human known as Homo antecessor – the first known inhabitants of England (and, indeed, Europe). No bones have ever been found but, amazingly, we have seen their footprints. In 2013, unusual tidal conditions in Happisburgh washed away a layer of surface sand to reveal the footprints of adults and children. Although now washed away, these were the oldest known human foot marks outside of Africa. They were heading towards what is now Great Yarmouth.

Other humans came and went over the millennia. The Neanderthals made it to Britain around 400,000 years ago. The town of Swanscombe in Kent contains a monument to their arrival. Here, a towering sculpture of a flint axe forms the centrepiece of a local nature reserve. It’s not quite Jurassic Park, though a plaque on the ground informs us that straight-tusked elephants once roamed around.

Britain seems to have been empty of humans between 180,000 and 60,000 years ago, when the Neanderthals returned. They were joined, then supplanted by modern humans about 40,000 years in the past. Their tenure was intermittent, as the climate turned first one way, then the other. At 12,000 years and counting, we are probably enjoying the longest spell of British habitation by modern humans. Long may it continue.

Land’s End to John o’ Groats is the longest distance in the UK

It’s funny what a grip this epic journey has on the British imagination. Land’s End in the extreme southwest of England and John o’ Groats* at the northeast tip of Scotland mark the start and finish of a popular journey of endurance. People flock to the challenge for fun, charity or personal accomplishment.

It is tackled most often on foot, but others have accomplished the journey on skateboard, in a wheelchair, entirely on public transport, or on a unicycle. One brave soul – Sean Conway in 2013 – even completed a swim around the coast. Some walkers make the journey barefoot. At least two trekkers cross-dressed. One rambled naked. Another covered the distance on a hand-powered bicycle, while dressed as a gorilla. If an intangible journey between two places can ever be dubbed iconic, this is it.

With so many people making the pilgrimage, you might think the route and distance would be well defined. They are not. The traditional distance – the one you’ll find on the famous sign posts at either end – is 1,407km (874 miles). Choose your route carefully, though, and you can trim this down to 1,310km (814 miles). Nobody has yet made the journey by crow but, as that bird flies, the route is just 970km (603 miles). One man completed the route without leaving his living room. In 2016, Aaron Puzey used a virtual reality headset plugged into Google Street View to cycle the distance on an exercise bicycle. Conversely, many walkers would rather go off-road and take a scenic route. The more established paths can follow some 1,900km (1,200 miles). The options are infinite.

The two termini are also a bit random. Land’s End in Cornwall* is indeed at the most south-westerly point in Britain, but the official visitor centre and signpost are in the wrong place. A more westerly spot can be found just to the north on the exceptionally named Dr Syntax’s Head. Dangerous cliffs mean that the public cannot stand here. At John o’ Groats the situation is still more dubious. Here, the visitor centre sits in the mid-curve of a bay, with more northerly coast on either side. It’s patently obvious to anyone who visits that more northerly and easterly points exist. Many walkers carry on a mile or two to Duncansby Head, which looks a much better candidate for a north-east tip. You can get still further north by heading west to the Dunnet Head RSPB Nature Reserve.

Hadrian’s Wall marks the border with Scotland

If walking the length of the country, from Land’s End to John o’ Groats, seems a bit of a struggle, then walking the breadth is much easier. The pinched neck of England, where the coast-to-coast distance is shortest, coincides with the route of Hadrian’s Wall. This Roman fortification stretches 117.5km (73 miles) from the Solway Firth in Cumbria to the mouth of the Tyne on the east coast. It is a trek of many contrasts, passing through suburbia, rural lands, rolling hills and floodplains. It cannot be done without gaining blisters, and I speak from personal experience.

Work on Hadrian’s Wall began in 122CE. It took about six years. Though it cut across the most northern, windswept fringes of their empire, it represents one of the most remarkable feats of engineering ever undertaken by the Romans. Sadly, only about 10 per cent of the structure survives today.

Like just about every ancient structure on the planet, Hadrian’s Wall is richly imbued with myth and fancy. The wall is so misunderstood that I’m going to break this one down into microfallacies.

Hadrian’s Wall marks the boundary with Scotland

No, it does not. The wall never so much as kisses the national border at any point. It lies entirely within England. At its eastern end, the fortification is some 109km (68 miles) away from Scotland – about as far as Canterbury is from central London. True, it does cosy up to within a kilometre of Scotland at the western end, but this is a one-off, and as close as things ever get.

But it used to mark the boundary with Scotland, right?

Wrong. Hadrian’s Wall has never marked the border. Look again at the eastern end. It passes through the middle of Newcastle. Plenty of England rises above that city, and always has. It’s called Northumberland.

OK, but Hadrian’s Wall did mark the boundary between Roman Britain and the barbarian north

The wall may have served as an emblematic frontier, but the reality was more nuanced. Roman soldiers regularly struck out and held territory farther to the north. The Antonine Wall is one example, constructed a generation after Hadrian’s Wall. This turf fortification was some 161km (100 miles) north of its predecessor, but was only held for eight years. Before any of this, the Romans had established forts and camps into the foothills of the Highlands. Known as the Gask Ridge system, these fortifications only operated for a handful of years in the decades before Hadrian’s Wall was constructed, but they show that the Romans didn’t simply draw a line in the sand and refuse to cross it. A few suspected Roman outposts have even been discovered as far north as Inverness.

The wall was a military barrier to keep the barbarians out of Roman Britain

It was intended as a defensive feature, but only up to a point. The wall was not designed to repel a full-on assault or stand up to prolonged siege. Its forts were garrisoned with auxiliary troops rather than the serious fighting force of the legions. It probably served more as a symbolic deterrent – beyond this line, you are entering proper Roman territory, and we will deal with you. For much of the time, the wall’s chief function was as a checkpoint, controlling the flow of trade, immigration and taxation.

It’s the longest fortification in England

While Hadrian’s Wall is considered the longest Roman artefact anywhere, it is not the most extensive fortification in England. For that, we have to turn to Offa’s Dyke, which broadly parallels the Welsh border. The dyke – which comprises a ditch below an embankment – runs some 240km (150 miles), making it approximately twice the length of Hadrian’s Wall (although it does have significant gaps). Its origins are sketchy. The dyke is conventionally attributed to Offa, King of Mercia from 757–796ce. Offa had the fortification built to protect Mercia from the neighbouring kingdom of Powys in Wales.

At least the name is correct. Hadrian’s Wall was a wall

It included a wall, but the structure was much more complex than a simple stack of stones. Turrets, milecastles and forts punctuated it at regular intervals. A notable ditch – still visible in places – tracked the north side of the wall, while the south was followed by a military road, two continuous earthworks and a smaller ditch. To call it a wall is to describe New York’s finest icon as the Staircase of Liberty.

But Emperor Hadrian was responsible for its construction?

He was! You’ll be surprised by now to learn that at least one fact about the wall is true. Its construction was ordered by the Emperor Hadrian in 122CE during his visit to Britain. The idea might have been around at earlier times, but Hadrian had the clout to make it a reality. The name ‘Hadrian’s Wall’ is, however, of more recent origin. We do not know what name was used by the Romans or their neighbours.

The River Severn is the longest waterway in England