Tell me about the cultural touchstones that have shaped your sense of Englishness

[BornAtTheEndofBrightonPier]

Or Scottishness, Welshness or Northern Irishness, if you're from one of the other nations of the UK (I'd love to steal Under Milk Wood from the Welsh MNs, but I can't do that!)

I have a few:

• Squeezing myself headfirst through the hole in the Mên-an-Tol in Cornwall, while the woman whose garden it stood in assured me I’d be blessed with good health for the rest of my life. I think it was 1991, when I was five.
• Exploring Bronze Age tumuli (burial mounds)
• Turner paintings that capture movement and light
• Thomas Hardy's heroines, like Tess Durbeyfield and Bathsheba Everdene
• The excitement of being a child at the back of the car and driving through a ford
• Organ music in church (particularly when it's Bach)
• Georgian architecture of Bath
• David Hockney
• The novels of Graham Greene
• The 1948 film of Brighton Rock starring Richard Attenborough (I'm from Brighton, so this is an extra special one for me)
• The novels of Evelyn Waugh
• Paradise Lost by John Milton
• Watching the 1946 version of Great Expectations on Christmas Eve
• M. R. James's ghost stories
• Hadrian's Wall and Sycamore Gap (RIP 😢)
• Glastonbury Tor
• Noggin the Nog (the cartoon Viking, repeated on TV in the early 90s)
• Maid Marian (the kids' TV show)
• Narnia
• Swimming around the arch of Durdle Door
• The League of Gentlemen
• Alan Partridge (even though I can't stand SC)
• Folk rock like Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span
• The Beatles
• Roxy Music
• David Bowie
• "All the Young Dudes"
• All pubs with character, both town and country
• Just William stories
• Powell and Pressburger films
• Walking through Kemp Town in Brighton just as a sea fret rolls in
• The illustrations and stories of Beatrix Potter
• Beatrix Potter's house in Cumbria
• Brighton Museum and Art Gallery
• White horses carved into hillsides
• Wuthering Heights
• Lewes Bonfire Night
• The Burning of the Clocks in Brighton for the winter solstice
• The film Lawrence of Arabia

I couldn't sleep last night, and these came to mind. I'd love to hear other people's lists.

Agree with many of ops list
Plus fish and chips at the coast, cheerful camping (not glamping) in the rain as a child
And the film Brief Encounter. It epitomised perfectly a particular era's thoughts and attitudes. It was essentially middle class in presentation but my mum, working class, said that she and everyone she knew identified with it from her very posh boss onwards

Agreed! I think it's wonderful when languages get revived and cultivated again.

My DH's mother is a Hebrew speaker for example (but she's a polyglot anyway and kicks up languages easily).

Trading my soggy cheese and tomato sandwich and an orange Club biscuit with the kid next to me in exchange for samose/pakore.

Dressing up in brightly coloured clothes and bracelets that jangled or clinked together on our wrists.

Somebody playing Exodus/Catch a Fire/Natty Dread somewhere in the distance every Saturday morning.

Thinking how pretty the Reception Teacher was with the sparkly beads in her hair and knowing that number 320 in the next street was where she and many other people went to get it done.

Going past the church walking the dog on a Sunday morning and seeing everybody in their dresses and hats and suits, coming back to hear the music.

Coming back from parties or somebody's house with recipes.

Spotting herbs or plants growing wild and coming back with small cuttings or seeds.

Sitting on a beach watching all the dogs have a brilliant time.

Wandering through the market and seeing chaniya glittering in the sunlight, grocers with fruit, veg, giant sacks of pulses and rice and the shops that sold bright makeup and hair products.

Going shopping with DP and answering him from the next aisle with 'Haldi. Should be next to the Jeera and Dhania. Bright yellow stuff, get the tub, not a bag. Oh, yeah, sorry - turmeric'.

Asking somebody why she had a cotton thread in her nose at school and finding out through the means of an Auntie, a needle and a raw piece of potato exactly how it got there.

Finding out that said Auntie was also a dab hand at torture threading eyebrows and random bits of the face I didn't even realise had hair on them - and seeing her face when I went a rather fetching shade of scarlet for twenty minutes afterwards. Only ever buying Immac twice before getting chemical burns on my legs and then being told 'I'll show you how to use hot sugar next time'.

Avoiding Shytehawks divebombing in the hope of getting some food on the Palace Pier.

Looking at a tree and realising that it was a sapling when priest were hiding in tunnels and secret passages or plague was spreading across Europe.

Seeing and hearing the results of architectural and acoustic engineering in churches, all that technical knowledge, mathematics, physics and chemistry involved in creating a building purely designed to carry people's prayers to their God.

Whenever the sun comes out, one half of the population dashing straight outside with as little clothing as possible or is legal, the other half retreating to the shade and under clothing.

I remember when my ex husband and I first started dating jn the 90’s it was cool to be of Indian descent (like he is - born in Reading to parents who got thrown out of Uganda in the 70’s). We had goodness, gracious me and all that. We would go clubbing to Bhangra music and watch Bollywood movies and I (of Irish descent, with a troubled family history of my grandfather being targeted by vile racists in the 70’s) thought that finally this country had evolved into one of understanding and celebrating diversity. I looked forward to having children in this new world who were a wonderful mix of Indian, Irish, Scottish and English.

Fast forward to now, my daughters get told to fuck off home and called p*aki.

It is quite incredible that you casually assign IRA ideology to anyone who queries your limited understanding of and questionable attitude towards Northern Ireland. Very troubling.

That's a rather extraordinary accusation, given that I've done no such thing. I've challenged a particular interpretation of the Troubles, not assigned IRA ideology to people who disagree with me. There's a difference, and conflating the two is a convenient way of sidestepping the actual argument.

If you had actually bothered to read what I'd written, you would have picked up on the fact that I completely reject the current orthodoxy of applying a simplistic oppressor-versus-
oppressed framework to history, that same lazy and reductive woke paradigm you see all over the CITME board, whereby events are interpreted through a contemporary ideological prism and historical actors are judged according to how neatly they fit that framework.

As for my supposedly limited understanding of Northern Ireland, I've discussed the evolution of British counter-insurgency doctrine, the role of intelligence and infiltration, the changing division of responsibilities between the Army and the RUC, and the strategic difficulties of fighting an insurgency with a conventional military. I've acknowledged British military failures and abuses, while also pointing out the nature of the IRA's campaign and the political consequences of the peace process. You may disagree with my conclusions, but dismissing my knowledge without engaging with any of that is hardly a substantive rebuttal.

And that's really the point: what is your counter-argument? Which part of my historical analysis is wrong, and what is your alternative explanation? It's remarkably easy to sit on the sidelines, make sweeping judgements about someone else's understanding and motives, and offer nothing in the way of a counterfactual or competing analysis. If you think I've misunderstood the history, demonstrate where. Simply asserting that I have doesn't make it so.

Cups of tea.

I travel extensively and always take my own teabags these days.

I feel like things were getting better, now they are getting worse. That said, most of the UK is noticeably more mixed in terms of heritage and race, and people don't stare as much as they used to when I was a child. Sad, though, that it's not an upwards process.

"indiscriminate bombers and hitmen" . Pray tell, what where the Paras on Bloody Sunday then ? It's not about having a pop at the English. It's about learning from a colonial past to improve the future . Something you obviously haven't as you sound like you are parroting some nonsense you were taught about the tricky Irish in 1982.

Yep , I am not going to engage with her anymore as she sounds very prejudiced and ill informed.

Why the fuck did you post this in Chat, OP?

I’m not English, I’m Irish but even I struggle not to get a little bit excited for DH and DS during the world cup and euros, especially if it’s hot

Agreed, @Dogsarethebestfriends
(great name by the way!)

Following up on my short list I think I felt most English when I lived in America. It made me appreciate what I was missing, particularly in terms of humour and interactions.
in contrast, I don’t get the English feels when I’m in Europe

Well, you can’t have listened very hard in your module on NI history if you didn’t understand that none of the atrocities were classified as ‘war crimes’. The unlawful killings of unarmed civilians carried out by the British army on Bloody Sunday, for instance, were investigated domestically, and, far too late (after the whitewash that was the Widgery tribunal and the Savile enquiry that prompted an apology from the British government) prosecuted under domestic criminal law, not at The Hague.

It’s a shame, although predictable that this thread has descended into a bunfight. It should be ok for an English person to list what feels quintessentially English, in the same way as a French person would list
what feels French or an Indian person what experiences make them feel Indian. Sure there are dark corners of our history and our present but why import that here?

Why?

Living on this corner of the globe is something that every English person living here, no matter their family's origin in past generations, has in common. It's something English people across the generations have in common regardless of their politics, culture, religion or decisions of the government of the day.

It's as inclusive as you can get and sometimes might be the only thing two English people from very different backgrounds have in common. Not a connection to throw away lightly in favour of talking about political division, IMO.

Yeah, I like the mixed descriptions people are giving and how they overlap/differ.
But it is a bit much to ask for someone's experiences and, when they answer honestly, jump on them. The whole point of experiences is that they are subjective, and this was the posters lived honest experience of what growing up in NI was. Telling her she is wrong is a little bit of a rug pull.

On a more wholesome note:

School hymns sung badly. Particularly "silk inside a chestnut shell" and my sister saying sarcastically "Jet planes meeting in the air to be refuelled ahhhh autumn".

Seaside holidays often in less than perfect weather and my dad saying "once more unto the beach"

Sticky floors in pubs (though also an Irish and Scottish thing I guess)

Living in London and it constantly feeling like a city that was changing as you watched it

Picnics on Iron age Barrows, castles and hill forts and the like. There is a beautiful bittersweet old English poem written by an Anglo-Saxon man about some Roman ruins and looking back on the past times an how one day these times will be the past and it sums up a sort of feeling about very old places and of course that was a 1000 years ago and we look at Anglo-Saxon ruins now with the same eyes

Beautiful countryside

Cowpats

Picking blackberries covered in pesticide

Polski-skep

Saying thank you to bus drivers

"Sorry"

Pretending to be a wild horse in Dartmoor

The RNLI badges

Strong cups of tea (I know it's a stereotype but I've lived elsewhere and we do drink a lot of tea and it is.hard to find nice strong tea elsewhere)

Nights out and music gigs in Manchester

Conker fights

I lived in Europe and did feel a lot more English than in England. Probably because I was working with mostly non-English people so it does make you more aware of what makes you English. (Not that any of the differences were bad ones at all. I liked my colleagues). I haven't lived in America but I can imagine that maybe the effect there would be more significant. But it's true you don't really think about what makes you "English" (or anything else) until you are elsewhere.

Mussels, Fish n Chips, cream teas, seaside rock. Cornwall, Lake District, Allan Bennett and his work. The Mitfords and The Spencer Family. Coronation Street.

Coming from an occupied territory of the UK I can't really relate. @BornAtTheEndofBrightonPier as the thread is so quintessentially British/English.
Tiocfaidh ár lá though.

What's English about Johann Sebastian Bach ;-)?

For me:
Stand-up comedy
School uniforms
Tea with milk
The Royal Opera House
The News at Ten
Village greens
Bell practice
Cricket
Pimms
Wimbledon
The Royals
Great pop and rock music
Mossy stone walls and ivy
Narrow country lanes between hedge rows
Oxford and Cambridge
Pub culture
3-course meals
Remembrance Day
The Peak District
Volunteering
Saying please and thank you

Playing rounders in the church grounds after choir practice and evensong in the summer when I was a child. Listening to Vaughan Williams. Hearing choral music from the 17th century being sung in cathedrals that are nearly 1000 years old and thinking of all the people who’ve hoped and prayed on the flagstones before me. The Book of Common Prayer. The idioms in everyday use from Shakespeare and the Authorised Version. The small humour that suffuses our everyday life and the fact that ‘humourless’ is one of our most damning descriptions of a person. Watching how the landscape changes as you go from south to north. Watching the sea on a cold, windy day. Tea in a good mug.

Ironically, I wouldn’t describe myself as ‘English’, being a bit of a mix genetically, but I was born in England and have lived in England all my life and I do feel hugely connected to what I consider my homeland, even if it wasn’t home for many of my ancestors.