This Little Britain: How One Small Country Changed the Modern World. Harry Bingham

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       THIS LITTLE BRITAIN

       How one small country built the modern world

       HARRY BINGHAM

       To my beloved N

      ‘Teach me thy love to know;

      That this new light, which now I see, May both the work and workman show: Then by a sunne-beam I will climbe to thee. See that ye love one another.’

       CONTENTS

       Introduction

       LANGUAGE

      Shaw’s Potato Declining to Conjugate A World of Squantos

LITERATURE Lashings of Pop Of Cows and Beef Half-chewed Latin A Wilderness of Monkeys

LAW The Rustics of England ‘No Free Man…’ A Handful of Feathers From the Same Mud

THE LAWMAKERS A Bettir Lawe No Remote Impassive Gaze Good King Frank A Most Strange and Wonderfull Herring Clean Hands, Dirty Money

      WARFARE Invasion The Mighty Monmouth How to Be a Superpower Lacking Elan President Monroe’s Trousers

      SCIENCE The First Scientist Ex Ungue Leonem The Last Scientist A Painful Admission

      TECHNOLOGY Raising Water by Fire The Horse, the Car, the Pogo Stick Colossus

      ECONOMY Whose Land? The Monster with 10,000 Eyes Wheat without Doong A Wave of Gadgets The Food of the People

      EMPIRE And Like a Torrent Rush The Gates of Mercy The Reluctant Father Bombay Direct Soldiers and Slaves

      LIFESTYLE The British Way of Death Yobs Clouds of Feculence Greeks Very Fine Linen

      CONCLUSION Age and Liberty

       Acknowledgements Sources Also by Harry Bingham Copyright About the Publisher

       INTRODUCTION

      Who are we?

      For we British, that’s an oddly difficult question. Although our national self-assessment usually notes a number of good points (we’re inventive, tolerant, and at least we’re not French), it lists a torrent of bad ones too. Our society is fragmented, degenerate, irresponsible. Our kids are thugs, our workers ill educated, our managers greedy and incompetent. We hate our weather. Our public services are abysmal. Our society is rude and unfriendly. We drink too much and in the wrong way. Our house prices are crazy, our politicians sleazy, our roads jammed, our football team rubbish. When The Times invited readers to put forward new designs for the backs of British coins, one reader wrote in saying, ‘How about a couple of yobs dancing on a car bonnet or a trio of legless ladettes in the gutter?’

      All this denigration may not be good for our self-esteem, but it does at least suggest the existence of some sort of national identity, however humble. But scratch below the surface and that identity quickly starts to unravel. Take the nationality issue, for example. How many countries are there whose name is as confused as ours? Are we best called Great Britain? The British Isles? The United Kingdom? Or none of these? The technically correct title is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland — a composite term which makes reference to a second composite term (Great Britain) and a chunk of land (Northern Ireland) that was until recently claimed by another sovereign state.

      Confused? It gets worse. Take sport. The English mostly cheer the team of any ‘home nation’, including the Republic of Ireland, which isn’t a home nation at all. Meanwhile the Scots cheer the Welsh and vice versa, while both will cheer anyone at all if they’re playing against England. Ryan Giggs, the best Welsh footballer of his generation, once captained the English Schoolboys. One of