This green and peasant land?
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 
What does it mean to be English? Is it the polyester football shirts, lager and kebabs of the busy high street? Is it John Major’s gentle thwack of leather on willow and warm ale on quiet village greens? Or is it Brick Lane’s curry houses and urban cool?
Is it the stoical clipped tones of the senior civil servant on the 07.17 to Euston, or the extravagant effing and blinding of the bare-chested brickie barreling through Brum in a banger?
Whatever it is – and there is a lot of debate over the success of the ‘multicultural experiment’ – let’s celebrate it today. Without straying into jingoism or nationalism, let’s salute the flag and be proud of where we’re from.
And while we’re at it, let’s tip our metaphorical hat to the world’s most famous playwright who died on the same day. And he is famous the world over. Bookpacking recently asked some South Americans if they had heard of William Shakespeare. We though we were being careful not to be Euro-centric and make cultural assumptions. But they looked at Bookpacking with an expression of hurt, saying something along the lines of “Of course! Do you think we’re from Mars or something?”
We won’t make that mistake again.