Personally, I’ve never had any problem with thinking of myself as English.
But what I think of when I think of Englishness isn’t @michaelgove’s “Our Island Story” vision of history: but rather of the bits left out of or played down in that history.
The Peasants’ Revolt. Kett’s Rebellion. Coke’s Case on Proclamations. John Pym. The Levellers. Milton. The Quakers. Tom Paine. Mary Wollstonecraft. Peterloo. William Blake. The Chartists. Charles Dickens and George Eliot. The trade union movement.
And so on.
That’s history. Landscape, buildings, comedy, music - all important too.
And I missed out the Oxford Movement and the Pre-Raphaelites. I’ll stop now.
