Reasonable, readable rambles

The subtitle, ‘On Settling’, is apt; the book is about the author’s settling in (you could nearly say ‘into’) what he calls ‘the claylands’, near Malmesbury in Gloucester-shire, and about the ‘settled’ nature of that place, the threats it has survived, the way it has adapted and, by extension, the manner in which England and ‘Englishness’ have evolved.

Concerning ‘Englishness’: today happens to be St George’s Day in brilliant sunshine. Earlier this morning there was a radio phone-in and people complaining that St George wasn’t even English, his flag has been hijacked by football hooligans, and so on. (Phone-ins are un-settling.) ‘English’ is a difficult word for someone with my surname. ‘Irishness’ is just as troublesome to define, but in that island some sort of definition had to be arrived at for historical reasons. Whereas England has had no need to define itself for 1,000 years; not, perhaps, until now.