BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

in England as of 2005. 3 Nevertheless, the fact that writers in both popular and academic genres
have spilled a lot of ink addressing the issue during the past two decades suggests an ongoing
interest, if not an obsession, with national identity. Certainly for historians any change or
continuity in attitudes becomes important for a long-term view of national self-imaging. The
following sections in this chapter will outline both the popular arguments and historiography
concerning British/English identity and delineate some significant cultural differences between
Britain and the Continent that affected conceptions of national identity.
British and English Identity
The apparent fragility of British identity in the face of political devolution and European
integration during the 1990s brought forth a cascade of books on national identity focusing on
race, place, class, empire or “all of the above” in their assessments of Britishness or Englishness.
Many of the so-called “portrait” books, and even some academic works on British and English
identity, have indulged in or bordered on myth-making themselves. Jeremy Paxman, for
example, filled the perceived need for a redefinition of Englishness in answer to Scottish and
Welsh devolution, and in doing so reaffirmed all of the traditional tropes from insularity to
individuality, eccentricity, domesticity, romantic ruralism, self-effacing intellectualism and love
of sport. 4 After describing the English as “casual Germans” Paxman proceeded to draw a sharp
contrast between English “sensible scepticism” toward the state and the inflated importance of a
Patrie or Vaterland. He credited an evolved English political identity for not having to elevate
3 FINAL REPORT of the Devolution and Constitutional Change Programme (Economic
and Social Research Council, 2005), online at http://www.devolution.ac.uk/final_report.htm.
4 The English: A Portrait of a People (London: Penguin, 1999), 135, 144, 191, 198-99.
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