Dazed and Confused

Paul Laity

• Patriots: National Identity in Britain 1940-2000 by Richard Weight
  Macmillan, 866 pp, £25.00, May 2002, ISBN 0 333 73462 9
• Pariah: Misfortunes of the British Kingdom by Tom Nairn
  Verso, 176 pp, £13.00, September 2002, ISBN 1 85984 657 2
• Identity of England by Robert Colls
  Oxford, 422 pp, £25.00, October 2002, ISBN 0 19 924519 3
• Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination by Peter Ackroyd
  Chatto, 518 pp, £25.00, October 2002, ISBN 1 85619 716 6

The organisers of the Festival of Britain in 1951 knew what to celebrate. At the start of the opening ceremony – a service in St Paul’s – the King praised the nation’s courage in the world wars; the official handbook declared categorically that ‘Britain is a Christian Community’; brightly coloured pavilions on the South Bank paid tribute to picturesque countryside, seaside holidays and an unparalleled tradition of Parliamentary government. To entice foreign visitors, four London buses made a promotional tour of the Continent. The lead bus, which sported a giant Union Jack, broadcast a continuous recording of ‘God Save the King’ and other patriotic anthems. ‘Not surprisingly’, Richard Weight remarks in Patriots, the convoy ‘got a muted reception when it parked in the ruins of Berlin’. In France, the bus crews were treated to mayoral banquets, only for their leader to complain about the ‘strange dishes’ which weren’t ‘up to English standards’. Frank Forsdick and his men asked for ‘a bit of old English roast beef or a plate of fish and chips’ and beer instead of wine.