This blog marks a very special moment as it is number one hundred and so in marking that flag in the sand I give you a book about the country I live in. For every who reads these blogs you have my eternal thanks and I hope to keep writing another hundred as I have a few bookcases to get through.
What does a patriot understand about Britain. Ask a typical one and what will you get? Maybe a comprehensive account of Britain's history, maybe flag waving.
Since I live on this island I might as well learn something about it, why it is the way it is, and find out who the hell we are.
'The creation of Europe's largest island was unlikely to have been the cause of celebration.' And we've been causing trouble ever since. Britain is the balance of Europe's powers making sure that no one nation could achieve overall control.
We are Europe but separated from it. An ambiguous cousin not entirely sure they want to be part of the family. We're independent but not immune from invasion. We produce some of the greatest geniuses that revolutionised the whole world and once we had the whole world in our hands. Small dogs with big ambitions.
We were once connected to Europe physically by a place called doggerland, now sunk in the sea. We had Romans, Vikings, Anglo-Saxons, Normans all pay a visit, wild Celts and wild animals hung around, the history is one of continual transformation, albeit over many generations.
'Britain's first fieldworker', John Leland of the 14th Centaury, captivated me. He was on a royal mission to rescue 'bibliographic treasures' from libraries after the suppression of the monasteries and privately as a topographer charted the land he inhabited. He saw more of the country than anyone else at the time. He also, for reasons unknown, went mad.
'He knew he was compiling an unprecedented audit of a remarkable land, but he also knew that it could never be finished.' It sounded like an idyllic journey, in a Britain that 'was almost entirely green: a rumpled, rustic island sparsely dotted with tiny, intense hubs of urban activity.' How times change.
Our ancestors had different ideas of life. They built monuments to their ancestors where 'the stones and the earth would be bequeathed to the next generation. They were expressions of continuity in a timeless world that gave so few years to the ant-like routines of humankind.'
Stonehenge, the White Horse of Uffington, St. Paul's Cathedral, Edinburgh Castle, the M5, all expressions of every age making it's mark on an island. A flags are not enough I need mythology and certainly this book gives much a lot of what I need. I love Britain.
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