England E-Book

Nicholas Hobbes

• Herausgeber: Atlantic Books
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 439

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Despite a thousand years of glorious history, the people of England know surprisingly little of the facts and fables, people and places and events and emblems that have shaped their country and its heritage. * Where did John Bull come from? * What is the Long Man of Wilmington? * Who abolished Christmas? * When did roast beef become a national dish? From the White Cliffs of Dover to MG Rover, from Newcastle Brown Ale to Royal Mail, and from John Milton to blue stilton, Nicholas Hobbes explains and celebrates the many facets of Englishness for today's readers. The result is as entertaining as it is essential.

Leseprobe

ENGLAND

NICHOLAS HOBBES lives in London and is the author of Essential Militaria, England: 1,001 Things You Need to Know and Stumped! The Sports Fan’s Book of Answers.

First published in hardback in Great Britain in 2006by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

This revised and updated paperback edition publishedin Great Britain in 2016 by Atlantic Books.

Copyright © Nicholas Hobbes 2006, 2016

The moral right of Nicholas Hobbes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright-holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

A CIP catalogue record for this book is availablefrom the British Library.

Paperback ISBN: 978 1 78649 035 3E-book ISBN: 978 178649 038 4

Text design by Lindsay NashPrinted in Great Britain

Atlantic BooksAn imprint of Atlantic Books LtdOrmond House26–27 Boswell StreetLondonWC1N 3JZ

SAEED JAFFREY: ‘He wants to know, are you Gods?’

MICHAEL CAINE: ‘Not Gods; Englishmen – which is the next best thing.’

From the film The Man Who Would Be King (1975)

This royal throne of kings, this sceptr’d isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise;

This fortress built by Nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war;

This happy breed of men, this little world;

This precious stone set in the silver sea,

Which serves it in the office of a wall,

Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands;

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England…

William Shakespeare,King Richard II, Act 2, scene 1 (1595–6)

Contents

Acknowledgements

Note

 1.Land and People

 2.National Character

 3.National Heroes

 4.Kings and Queens

 5.Crown, State and Law

 6.The English Language

 7.Literature and Letters

 8.Stage and Screen

 9.Music

10.Art and Architecture

11.Food and Drink

12.Symbols and Institutions

13.Science and Technology

14.Industry, Agriculture and Commerce

15.The Church

16.Legends and Folklore

17.Warfare

18.Sports and Pastimes

Appendix

Acknowledgements

Special thanks go to Penny Gardiner, Angus MacKinnon and Toby Mundy for their work in editing and overseeing this book. Thanks also go to Charlotte Foley, Raj Patel, Nicola Perrin and Richard Wood-Wilson for additional help with material and sources, and to Sheila Oakes for ‘The Man Who Would Be King’.

Note

Individuals are counted as English if they were born in England or if they were born abroad to English parents and subsequently migrated to England.

1

LANDAND PEOPLE

‘England is the paradise of women, the purgatory of men, and the hell of horses.’

John Florio (c. 1553–1625)

——

England at a Glance

——

Population: The Office for National Statistics estimated the population to be 54,316,600 in mid-2014, accounting for 84 per cent of the United Kingdom’s population.

Area: 50,363 sq. miles (130,439 sq. km)

Urbanized area: 11 per cent

Forested area: 13 per cent

Highest point: Scafell Pike 3,210 ft (978 metres)

Lowest point on land: Holme Fen, Cambridgeshire 9 ft (2.75 metres) below sea level

Coastline: 2,000 miles (3,200 km)

Furthest place from the sea: Coton in the Elms, Derbyshire – 72 miles

Largest lake: Lake Windermere, Cumbria – 6 sq. miles (16 sq. km)

Largest desert: Dungeness, covering 12 square miles in Kent, is classified as a desert by the Met Office due to its dryness and lack of vegetation.

Geographic centre: Traditionally, Meriden in Warwickshire. However, the Ordnance Survey’s Gravitational Method of Mapping, which includes the nation’s small islands, gives Fenny Drayton in Leicestershire as the centre.

Highest recorded temperature: 38.5°C (101.3°F) on 10 August 2003 in Gravesend, Kent

Lowest recorded temperature: –26.1°C (–15°F) on 10 January 1982 in Shropshire

Principal crops: Wheat, barley, potatoes, sugar beet, oilseed rape

Natural resources: Coal, petroleum, natural gas, tin, limestone, iron ore, salt, clay, chalk, gypsum, lead, silica

Literacy: 99 per cent

Mobile phone ownership: 93 per cent of adults (defined as 15+). 67 per cent use a smartphone.*

Home Internet access: 84 per cent*

National motto: ‘Dieu et mon droit’ (‘God and my right’)

Coat of arms: Three Lions

Life expectancy: Men 79.5 years, women 83.2 years

Number of times the average citizen is captured on CCTV each day: 300 (600 in Central London)

Percentage who identified themselves in 2003 as ‘English’ or ‘More English than British’: 36 per cent (up from 24 per cent in 1997) (Source: IPPR)

*Source: ‘The Communications Market 2015’, Ofcomx

——

The Four Corners of England

——

Most northerly pointMarshall Meadows, NorthumberlandMost southerly pointLizard Point, CornwallMost easterly pointLowestoft Ness, SuffolkMost westerly pointLand’s End, Cornwall

——

Nomenclature

——

‘England’ derives from ‘Land of the Angles’, the Germanic tribe from Angeln in the south of the Danish peninsula.

‘Albion’ stems either from the Latin albus for ‘white’, meaning the White Cliffs of Dover, or the Celtic word for the whole of Britain.

‘Blighty’ originated with soldiers serving in India and derives from bilayati, the Urdu for ‘foreign land’.

——

The Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy

——

The Heptarchy were the seven kingdoms that ruled Anglo-Saxon England for three hundred years until Wessex gained supremacy around AD 829:

East AngliaNorthumbria*EssexSussexKentWessexMercia 

* Northumbria was divided for the most part into two warring kingdoms, Deira and Bernicia.

——

Modern Regions

——

England is divided into nine official regions:

LondonNorth-EastSouth-EastYorkshire and the HumberSouth-WestEast MidlandsWest MidlandsEastNorth-West 

——

Four Regional Monikers

——

COCKNEYS

A ‘cockney’ was traditionally someone born within earshot of the bells of St Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside, East London. This meant a 3-mile (5 kilometres) radius that included the City, Bethnal Green, Finsbury, Hackney, Shoreditch, Stepney and Whitechapel. The term stems from the Old English word ‘cocena’, meaning ‘cock’s egg’ – or, in other words, the runt of a clutch, which came to be applied to unhealthy city dwellers.

GEORDIES

The most plausible origin for the term ‘Geordie’ is that it stems from Newcastle’s support for George III during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. It was traditionally applied to anyone born within sight of the River Tyne, for those who lived further out in Northumbria were more likely to have supported the Jacobites. Geordies use the derogatory term ‘Mackems’ for the residents of Sunderland, referring to their shipbuilding industry – ‘they make them and we take them’ becomes ‘make them and take them’. Geordies refer to their Hartlepool neighbours as ‘monkey-hangers’ after the incident during the Napoleonic Wars when a shipwrecked monkey was hanged as a French spy.

SCOUSERS

Liverpool natives acquired the name from ‘lobscouse’, a mutton and hard-tack stew once popular with sailors and their families.

TYKES

Every Yorkshireman is proud to call himself a ‘Tyke’, which was an Old Norse word introduced by Viking settlers to refer to a vicious dog. An alternative, though no kinder, explanation is that it derives from the Welsh ‘taeog’, meaning rogue before it was used to refer to farmers.

——

The Traditional Counties

——

The number of English counties and their names have changed several times, but thirty-seven traditional counties still exist in some administrative form:

Bedfordshire

Royal County of Berkshire

Buckinghamshire

Cambridgeshire

Cheshire

Cornwall

Cumbria

Derbyshire

Devon

Dorset

County Durham

Essex

Gloucestershire

Hampshire

Herefordshire

Hertfordshire

Isle of Wight

Kent

Lancashire

Leicestershire

Lincolnshire

Norfolk

Northamptonshire

Northumberland

Nottinghamshire

Oxfordshire

Rutland

Shropshire

Somerset

Staffordshire

Suffolk

Surrey

Sussex

Warwickshire

Wiltshire

Worcestershire

Yorkshire

The largest is Yorkshire. Rutland is the smallest.

Former counties: Cumberland and Westmoreland (now Cumbria), Huntingdonshire (now part of Cambridgeshire), Middlesex (now part of Greater London), Monmouthshire (now part of Wales).

Berkshire is England’s only ‘Royal’ county, denoting the patronage of the Crown.

——

The Home Counties

——

These border London and comprise:

Berkshire

Buckinghamshire

Essex

Hertfordshire

Kent

Surrey

——

London Boroughs

——

There are thirty-two boroughs in Greater London, not including the City of London (‘The Square Mile’):

Barking and Dagenham

Barnet

Bexley

Brent

Bromley

Camden

Croydon

Ealing

Enfield

Royal borough of Greenwich

Hackney

Hammersmith & Fulham

Haringey

Harrow

Havering

Hillingdon

Hounslow

Islington

Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea

Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames

Lambeth

Lewisham

Merton

Newham

Redbridge

Richmond upon Thames

Southwark

Sutton

Tower Hamlets

Waltham Forest

Wandsworth

City of Westminster

——

National Parks

——

There are nineteen, covering 9.3 per cent of the country’s land:

The BroadsNorthumberlandDartmoorNorth York MoorsExmoorPeak DistrictLake DistrictSouth DownsNew ForestYorkshire Dales

——

The Ten Largest Cities

And their populations according to the 2011 Census

——

1.  London7,074,2652.  Birmingham1,020,5893.  Leeds726,9394.  Sheffield530,3755.  Bradford483,4226.  Liverpool467,9957.  Manchester430,8188.  Bristol399,6339.  Wakefield317,34210.  Dudley312,194

——

The Cathedral Towns

——

Possession of a cathedral does not automatically confer city status, as in the case of the following:

BlackburnRochester*Bury St EdmundsSouthwarkChelmsfordSouthwellGuildford 

* Rochester lost its city status in 1998, when the local authorities of Rochester and Gillingham became Medway.

——

The Ten Best English Beaches

According to Trip Advisor ratings 2016

——

1. Woolacombe, North Devon

2. Weymouth, Dorset

3. Porthmeor, Cornwall

4. Fistral, Cornwall

5. Porthminster, Cornwall

6. Perranporth, Cornwall

7. Hengistbury Head, Dorset

8. Bournemouth, Dorset

9. Filey, North Yorkshire

10. Sandbanks, Dorset

——

The Mongrel Race?

——

‘From a mixture all kinds began, that heterogeneous thing – an Englishman.’

Daniel Defoe, The True-Born Englishman (1701)

The eleven chief sources of the English gene pool, along with the date of first large-scale immigration:

CELTS – PRE ROMAN

THE GERMANIC TRIBES (‘ANGLO-SAXONS’)

JutesJutland Peninsulalate fourth centuryFrisiansNorthern Germanyfifth centurySaxonsNorthern Germanyfifth centuryAnglesSouthern Denmarksixth century

NORSEMEN

VikingsNorway, Sweden, Denmarkninth centuryNormansNorthern Franceeleventh century

JEWS – ELEVENTH CENTURY

Encouraged to settle by William the Conqueror to aid trade and commerce. Most were expelled by Edward I in 1290. Jews did not return in significant numbers until the late seventeenth century under Charles II. (Responsibility for the new tolerance is often erroneously awarded to Oliver Cromwell, who was petitioned without success by the Jews of Amsterdam.)

FRENCH – SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Huguenots fleeing religious persecution under Louis XIV.

AFRICANS – SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

There were around 14,000 black people in England by 1770, many of them working as servants, though the first were slaves accompanying West Indian planters’ children to school in the homeland. Black African legionnaires manned Hadrian’s Wall in AD 250, but there is no evidence that they remained in England.

IRISH – NINETEENTH CENTURY

Fleeing poverty and famine between 1830 and 1850.

POLES – TWENTIETH CENTURY

157,000 settled in England after the Second World War.

WEST INDIANS – TWENTIETH CENTURY

First arrived at Tilbury Docks on HMS Empire Windrush in 1948.

ASIANS – TWENTIETH CENTURY

Small-scale immigration from the Indian subcontinent began with servants and businessmen in the nineteenth century and gathered pace in the twentieth: 28,000 African Asians were admitted in two months in 1972 after they were expelled from Uganda by the tyrant, Idi Amin.

EAST EUROPEANS – TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

900,000 arrivals since 2004. According to Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, England’s foreign-born population rose from 3.8 million to 7.7 million from 1995 to 2014.

——

Population since 1066

And comparisons with modern nations

——

All medieval figures for England’s population are estimates, while official censuses are slight underestimates of the real total. Up to 250,000 went uncounted in the first census in 1801. More recently, large-scale unrecorded immigration has led the government to suggest that current figures may be out by up to 400,000 people.

10661,100,000(comparable to Swaziland or East Timor in 2016)12152,500,000(Qatar)13483,750,000(Bosnia and Herzegovina)

The Black Death

13502,500,000(Qatar)15704,800,000(Costa Rica)16305,800,000(Denmark)17006,500,000(El Salvador)18018,308,000*(Switzerland)18119,496,000(Belarus)182111,158,000(Somalia)183112,993,000(Guinea)184114,866,000(Chad)185116,769,400†(Malawi)186118,776,300(Burkina Faso)187121,298,000(Sri Lanka)188124,402,700(Angola)189127,230,200(Afghanistan)190130,515,000(Malaysia)191133,651,600(Morocco)

First World War

192135,230,200(Uganda)193137,359,000(Poland)

Second World War

195141,042,200(Algeria)196143,983,300(Argentina)197145,870,100(Spain)198146,623,500(Spain)199148,067,300(Colombia)200149,138,831(Colombia)

* The first census.

† Beginning of regular censuses.

——

England’s Demographics

Four key factors

——

BIRTH RATE

The highest birth rate since records began in 1924 was in 1964, when the average woman had 2.93 children. The average number of children per woman in England in 2014 was 1.83. The ‘replacement rate’ that is required to maintain the population at its current level is 2.1 children per woman. However, the population is expected to continue to increase rather than dwindle due to immigration.

According to the Office for National Statistics, couples in London have the fewest children, with an average fertility rate per woman of 1.71 in 2014, compared with a high of 1.92 in the West Midlands and the East of England.

The number of births outside marriage rose from 30 per cent in 1991 to 47.5 per cent in 2014.

Women are waiting on average until the age of 28 before starting a family.

In London in 2014, 58 per cent of births were to mothers born outside the United Kingdom. The figure for the country as a whole was 27 per cent.

AGE BREAKDOWN

Age 0–43,318,449Age 5–71,827,610Age 8–91,145,022Age 10–143,080,929Age 15650,826Age 16–171,314,124Age 18–191,375,315Age 20–243,595,321Age 25–293,650,881Age 30–4410,944,271Age 45–5910,276,902Age 60–643,172,277Age 65–744,552,283Age 75–842,928,118Age 85–89776,311Age 90+403,817

Source: 2011 Census

ETHNICITY

White:85.3 per centAsian (Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi):2.1 per centAfro-Caribbean:3.5 per centMixed race:2.3 per centChinese:0.7 per centOther Asian:1.5 per centBlack other:0.2 per cent

Source: 2011 Census

——

Population Density

——

With 419 people per square km in 2015, England was the fifth most densely populated country in the world (not counting small islands, dependencies and city-states).

——

The Ten Longest Rivers

——

  1.Severn220 miles (354km)  2.Thames215 miles (346km)*  3.Trent185 miles (297km)  4.Great Ouse150 miles (240km)  5.Wye130 miles (208km)  6.Tweed97 miles (156km)  7.Avon96 miles (154km)  8.Tees80 miles (130km)  9.Ribble75 miles (120km)  10.Mersey70 miles (112km)

* The Thames is the longest river that lies wholly within England – parts of the Severn lie in Wales.

——

Land Usage

——

Grasses and rough grazing37 per centCrops and fallow30 per centUrban/developed19 per centForest and woodland9 per centOther5 per cent

Source: DEFRA 2004

——

Forest and Woodland Cover

——

6,000 BC 80 per centAD 100 20 per cent1086 15 per cent1350 10 per cent1800 8 per cent1905 5.2 per cent1924 5.1 per cent1947 5.8 per cent1965 6.8 per cent1980 7.3 per cent2005 8.6 per cent

Source: Forestry Commission

——

Tree Species

Three phases of colonization

——

INDIGENOUS SPECIES

AlderCherryHollyAshCrab appleHornbeamBeech*ElderJuniperBirchElmsLimeBlack poplarHawthornMapleBoxHazelOaksRowanWhitebeamYewServiceWillow

* Julius Caesar reported that beech trees could not be found in Britain in the first century AD, but modern botanists disagree.

ROMAN IMPORTS

Stone pineSycamoreSweet chestnutWalnut

SIXTEENTH-CENTURY IMPORTS

Horse chestnut – from the Balkans. ‘Conkers’ was originally played in England with hazelnuts or snail shells.

Norway spruce (Christmas Tree) – native before the Ice Age, reintroduced in 1500s from Germany and Scandinavia.

Source: Royal Forestry Society

——

The Cinque Ports

——

The confederation of the Cinque Ports (‘Five Ports’) provided the backbone of the English Royal Fleet between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries in return for tax and trading privileges. Some of the latter lasted into the early nineteenth century.

THE PORTS

Hastings (theHytheDoverchief port)New RomneySandwich

They were supported by the ‘Ancient Towns’ of Winchelsea and Rye.

As several of the Cinque Ports’ harbours became silted, further ports were added as ‘Limbs’, including:

DealLyddTenterdenFavershamMargate FolkestoneRamsgate 

——

The Royal Parks

——

  1. Richmond Park, Surrey2,500 acres  2. Bushy Park, Middlesex1,099 acres  3. Hampton Court Park and Gardens, Surrey669 acres  4. Regent’s Park and Primrose Hill, London NW1487 acres  5. Hyde Park, London W1/W2350 acres  6. Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, Surrey300 acres  7. Kensington Gardens, London W2/W8275 acres  8. Greenwich Park, London SE10183 acres  9. St James’s Park, London SW193 acres 10. Green Park, London W140 acres

——

The Royal Palaces

——

1. Buckingham Palace, London (the monarch’s official London residence since 1837)

2. Windsor Castle, Windsor (the world’s largest occupied castle)

3. Frogmore House, Windsor (the site of Queen Victoria and Albert’s mausoleum)

4. Palace of Holyrood House, Edinburgh

5. Balmoral Castle, Aberdeenshire

6. Sandringham House, Norfolk (the Queen’s Christmas retreat)

7. Clarence House, London (the official residence of the Prince of Wales)

8. St James’s Palace, London (the sovereign’s ‘senior palace’)

9. Kensington Palace, London

10. Hampton Court Palace, Surrey

11. Banqueting House, London (part of the old Whitehall Palace)

12. Hillsborough Castle, County Down, Northern Ireland

13. Kew Palace, Richmond (the smallest royal palace)

——

The English Rain

——

‘In England all they ever do is talk about the weather. But no one does a damn thing about it.’

George Axelrod

The wettest month, on average, is November with 3.4 inches (84 mm). The driest are March and June with 2 inches (50 mm).

The Lake District is England’s wettest region, with 130 inches (330 cm) each year.

The year 2000 was the wettest since records began in 1776. December 2015 was the wettest month.

——

The Eleven Grand English Waterfalls

——

1. Aira Force, Lake District

2. Aysgarth Falls, Yorkshire Dales

3. Cauldron Snout, County Durham*

4. Cautley Spout, Yorkshire Dales

5. Gaping Gill, Yorkshire Dales

6. Hardraw Force, Yorkshire Dales

7. High Force, County Durham

8. Kisdon Force, Yorkshire Dales

9. Lady Exmouth Falls, Dartmoor

10. Low Force, County Durham

11. Scale Force, Lake District

* Cauldron Snout is considered to be England’s highest at 150 feet (45 metres), though there are disputes over whether to measure the height above ground or sea level and whether to include horizontal stretches.

——

England’s Seventeen UNESCO World Heritage Sites

——

1. Blenheim Palace

2. Canterbury Cathedral, St Augustine’s Abbey and St Martin’s Church

3. City of Bath

4. Derwent Valley Mills (Derbyshire)

5. Dorset and East Devon Coast

6. Durham Castle and Cathedral

7. Frontiers of the Roman Empire – Hadrian’s Wall (shared with Scotland)

8. Ironbridge Gorge (Shropshire)

9. Liverpool – Maritime Mercantile City

10. Maritime Greenwich

11. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

12. Saltaire (West Yorkshire)

13. Stonehenge, Avebury and associated sites

14. Studley Royal Park including the ruins of Fountains Abbey (Yorkshire)

15. Tower of London

16. Westminster Palace, Westminster Abbey and St Margaret’s Church

17. Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Canal (shared with Wales)

——

Famous Standing Stones

——

England’s earliest stone circles from around 3000 BC predate the Druids by several centuries.

STONEHENGE (c. 3100–1500 BC), WILTSHIRE

The eighty or so ‘Bluestones’ erected in the second phase of building in about 2100 BC, each weighing 4 tons, were somehow transported from the Preseli Mountains in South Wales, 250 miles (402km) away. Parts of Stonehenge were scavenged for building materials in the Middle Ages.

AVEBURY STONE CIRCLE (c. 3000 BC), WILTSHIRE

The largest stone circle in the world consists of two circles enclosed by a larger circle a quarter of a mile in diameter that encompasses 28 acres (0.405 hectares) and part of the village of Avebury. Twenty-seven stones remain out of what could once have been up to a hundred.

CASTLERIGG STONE CIRCLE (c. 3000 BC), CUMBRIA

A ring of thirty-eight boulders, 100 feet (30 metres) in diameter, set in the natural amphitheatre of the Keswick Hills.

THE ROLLRIGHT STONES (c. 2500 BC), OXFORDSHIRE

The site consists of the seventy-seven heavily weathered stones in the Kings’ Men circle, the King Stone, and the Whispering Knights stones. The King Stone has been chipped away at in recent centuries to make lucky charms.

LONG MEG AND HER DAUGHTERS (c. 2500 BC), CUMBRIA

Long Meg is a 12-foot high (3.5 metres) piece of red sandstone that stands outside the circle of her ‘daughters’. According to local legend, they were a coven of witches turned to stone by the Scottish wizard Michael Scott. He is said to have cast another spell to make the stones uncountable, but there is little dispute today that twenty-seven remain out of what was once around seventy. They also inspired a Wordsworth poem.

——

Famous Hill Figures

——

Giant figures were cut into chalk hills in various parts of the country by persons unknown. Just as strange as who created them and why is the fact that they must have been rescoured every few years, sometimes for millennia, despite the absence of interested tourist boards until relatively recently. A single break in the tending would allow the turf to overgrow the figure and erase it forever. This fate befell giants in Oxford, Cambridge and Plymouth Hoe, where a figure was first referred to in 1486. The three most famous surviving hill figures are:

THE CERNE ABBAS GIANT

The Dorset figure stands, or lies, 180 feet tall (55 metres), carries a giant club and boasts a penis 26 feet long (8 metres) erect. The phallus has been ‘improved’ at least once over the years during successive rescourings. It probably dates only to the seventeenth century, as there are no extant references to it before 1694. Sleeping on the giant is said to boost fertility.

THE WHITE HORSE OF UFFINGTON

Various explanations have been cited, including it being a memorial to Alfred the Great’s victory over the Danes in 871, or a picture of the horse St George was riding when he slew the dragon. All theories were refuted in the 1990s, however, after silt dating suggested that it was created as early as 1000 BC. It is said that a wish made while standing within the horse’s eye will come true.

THE LONG MAN OF WILMINGTON

A naked giant holding two poles dates back to at least 1710. He is said to be the ‘crime scene’ outline of a monster who died on the hillside.

There are over fifty figures in total, seventeen of which are horses (the most recent being created in Folkestone in 2003). The others include the Bulford Kiwi, the Mormond Stag, the Tan Hill Donkey, the Whipsnade Lion, the Laverstock Panda and the regimental badges of several army units.

——

Eight Historic Mazes

——

The view that the English were descended from the Trojans was popular in Elizabethan England. This is reflected in the names of some of the country’s eight surviving turf labyrinths.

1. City of Troy, c. 1860 – Dalby, North Yorkshire

2. Julian’s Bower, 1170 – Alkborough, Lincolnshire

3. The Old Maze, c. 1634 – Wing, Rutland

4. The Maze, 1660 – Hilton, Cambridgeshire

5. Troy Town, c. 1700 – Somerton, Oxfordshire

6. The Maze, 1699 – Saffron Walden, Essex

7. The Mizmaze, late 17th century – Winchester, Hampshire

8. The Mizmaze, medieval – Breamore, Hampshire

——

Four Literary Landscapes

——

1. Brontë Country: the West Yorkshire and East Lancashire Pennines

2. Austen Country: Hampshire

3. Hardy Country: Dorset

4. Wordsworth Country: the Lake District

——

The Last English Wolf, and Other Extinct Animals

——

In 1281, Edward I decided that wolves should be eradicated to protect the wool trade that was an increasing source of English wealth. He enlisted Peter Corbet to oversee the extermination of all wolves in the counties of Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, Shropshire and Staffordshire. According to myth, the task was completed by the young Lady Jane Grey in the 1540s, who used a hunting knife and a stick to dispatch a wolf that attacked her. However, the truth is that Edward’s wish had been fulfilled by no later than 1500.

Where the last English wolf was killed depends upon which local tourist board is to be believed. A vigorous claim has been pursued by Cumbria, which insists that John Harrington shot the last animal after a long chase at Humphrey Head, the largest limestone cliff in the region some time in the late fifteenth century. The event is commemorated by a wolf’s head on the weathervane of the nearby Cartmel Priory. Rival claimants include Wolverstone in Devon and Stittenham in Yorkshire.

OTHER EXTINCTIONS

10th centuryLynxc. 1200Beaver16th centuryWild boar (though several farmed boars have escaped in recent years)17th centuryRoe deer (reintroduced in 18th century)1935Muskrat (eradicated after being unwisely introduced from North America)1955Horned dung beetle1957Norfolk damselfly1972Burbot fish1987Coypu (exterminated as a pest after being introduced from South America)1990Mouse-eared bat, the largest bat in the UK1994Pine marten

——

Dinosaurs

——

A bone from a megalosaurus was discovered in a quarry near Oxford in 1676, when it was thought to be the thighbone of a giant.

The existence of dinosaurs was confirmed in England in 1822 when Mary Ann Mantell found a fossilized tooth in Tilgate Forest in Cuckfield. It looked like an iguana’s tooth, only much larger, so her husband Gideon named the creature Iguanadon from the ancient Greek word for tooth, ‘odontos’. The dinosaur is a favourite of schoolchildren, who know it as ‘the one with the spiky thumbs’ and lived 121 million years ago. The thumb was at first mistakenly thought to be a horn. Other beasts that once roamed the land that became England (or swam around what became her shores) include:

DimorphodonPteranodon*EotyrannusPterodactyl*Ichthyosaurus*ScelidosaurusMegalosaurusTitanosaurusPlesiosaurus*

* Not a ‘true’ dinosaur, but related.

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English Dog Breeds

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Border Terrier

Bull Mastiff

Bull Terrier

Cavalier King Charles Spaniel

Clumber Spaniel

English Boodle

English Bulldog

English Bullen Bordeaux Terrier

English Cocker Spaniel

English Coonhound

English Foxhound

English Pointer

English Setter

English Shepherd

English Springer Spaniel

English Toy Spaniel

Field Spaniel

Flat-coated Retriever

Fox Terrier (Smooth)

Fox Terrier (Wire)

Harrier

Jack Russell Terrier

Lakeland Terrier

Manchester Terrier

Mastiff

Miniature Bull Terrier

Norfolk Terrier

Norwich Terrier

Old English Sheepdog

Otter Hound

Rat Terrier

Staffordshire Bull Terrier

Sussex Spaniel

Toy Fox Terrier

Toy Manchester Terrier

Whippet

Yorkshire Terrier

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Migratory Birds

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SUMMER VISITORS

Arctic Tern

Common Crane

Cuckoo

Curlew Sandpiper

Fulmar

Gannet

Garden Warbler

Garganey

Golden Oriole

Grasshopper Warbler

Guillemot

Hobby

Honey Buzzard

Housemartin

Kittiwake

Lesser Whitethroat

Little Ringed Plover

Little Tern

Manx Shearwater

Marsh Harrier

Marsh Warbler

Montagu’s Harrier

Nightingale

Nightjar

Pied Flycatcher

Puffin

Quail

Razorbill

Redstart

Reed Warbler

Ring Ouzel

Roseate Tern

Sand Martin

Sandwich Tern

Savi’s Warbler

Sedge Warbler

Serin

Spotted Crake

Spotted Flycatcher

Stone Curlew

Swallow

Swift

Tree Pipit

Turtle Dove

Wheatear

Whinchat

Whitethroat

Willow Warbler

Wood Warbler

Yellow Wagtail

WINTER VISITORS

Barnacle Goose

Bar-tailed Godwit

Bean Goose

Bewick’s Swan

Black-tailed Godwit

Brambling

Brent Goose

Fieldfare

Glaucous Gull

Goldeneye

Great Northern

Diver

Green Sandpiper

Greenshank

Grey Plover

Jack Snipe

Knot

Lapland Bunting

Little Auk

Little Gull

Long-tailed Duck

Mealy Redpoll

Pink-footed Goose

Purple Sandpiper

Red-necked Grebe

Redwing

Sanderling

Scaup

Slavonian Grebe

Smew

Snow Bunting

Spotted Redshank

Turnstone

Velvet Scoter

Water Pipit

Waxwing

White-fronted Goose

Whooper Swan

Wigeon

2

NATIONAL CHARACTER

‘The English, of any people in the universe, have the least of a national character; unless this very singularity may pass for such.’

David Hume, Of National Character (1742)

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National Characteristics

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‘Solidity, caution, integrity, efficiency. Lack of imagination, hypocrisy. These qualities characterize the middle classes in every country, but in England they are national characteristics.’

E. M. Forster, Notes on the English Character (1920)

‘Here are a couple of generalisations about England that would be accepted by almost all observers. One is that the English are not gifted artistically. They are not as musical as the Germans or Italians, painting and sculpture have never flourished in England as they have in France. Another is that, as Europeans go, the English are not intellectual. They have a horror of abstract thought, they feel no need for any philosophy or systematic “world view”. Nor is this because they are “practical”, as they are so fond of claiming for themselves. One has only to look at their methods of town-planning and water-supply, their obstinate clinging to everything that is out-of-date and a nuisance, a spelling system that defies analysis and a system of weights and measures that is intelligible only to compilers of arithmetic books, to see how little they care about mere efficiency.’

George Orwell, England, Your England (1941)

Internationally recognized characteristics of the English include:

THE CULT OF THE AMATEUR

‘The English think incompetence is the same thing as sincerity.’

Quentin Crisp

In The Character of England (1947) the political scientist Sir Ernest Barker wrote, ‘It is perhaps a true economy of effort which has inspired us to be the lovers of activity (for the amateur is by definition a lover) rather than its servants.’ Rather less kindly, it might be attributed to an attempt on the part of the upper classes to retain precedence in activities in which they had been far outstripped by the lower orders. Athletics is a case in point, with the times set by nineteenth-century runners conveniently forgotten by the gentlemen of the British Olympic Commission. Qualities of sportsmanship were valued over monetary concerns by those who had no need to worry about their income. The Cult of the Amateur arguably exacerbated the decline of British industry in the post-war years and before them it undoubtedly had a catastrophic effect on England’s performance on the battlefield against anyone who was equally well equipped.

FAIR PLAY

Fair play was part of the code of honour of the Knights of the Round Table in Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. Such chivalry filtered through to the general population to an extent, but it has always been the particular preserve of the nobility. When Henry V ordered the French prisoners on the battlefield at Agincourt to be executed, his knights demurred and the archers carried out the task. In the film The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968), John Gielgud’s Lord Raglan intones: ‘I do not like to see an officer who knows too well what he is doing – it smacks of murder.’ The results are well known, but as late as 1939, when Sir Kingsley Wood, the head of the Air Ministry, was instructed to fire-bomb German munitions stores in the Black Forest, he replied, ‘Are you aware that it’s private property? Why, you’ll be asking me to bomb Essen next!’

English sportsmanship is counterbalanced by the phenomenon of the English ‘rotter’, ‘cad’ or ‘bounder’, personified by the actor Terry-Thomas. The classic rotter has lately been replaced by the more democratic ‘love rat’ in the tabloid press. But there was far more to rotters than merely cheating on their partners. The rotter was an anti-hero who bent the rules of English fair play and got away with it through his charm. He did it with style, a plummy accent and a thin moustache, and then he drove away in a vintage sports car.

ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM

‘Always in England if you had the type of brain that was capable of understanding T. S. Eliot’s poetry or Kant’s logic, you could be sure of finding large numbers of people who would hate you violently.’

D. J. Taylor, Guardian, 14 September 1989

England is the land of common sense. Terms like ‘Clever Dick’ and ‘Egghead’ have few equivalents in continental Europe, where intellectuals are respected celebrities. The attitude has inoculated the English against the various forms of political extremism that have destroyed other nations.

POLITENESS

‘In no country inhabited by white men is it easier to shove people off the pavement.’

George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn (1941)

The English are obsessed with the word ‘sorry’. According to the novelist Will Self, ‘It is even rumoured that some Englishmen say “sorry” at the point of orgasm…’

STOICISM

Examples range from Winston Churchill climbing on to his roof to watch the Blitz, to Lord Uxbridge’s famous exchange with the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo: ‘By God, sir, I’ve lost my leg.’ – ‘By God, sir, so you have.’ A useful trait in wartime has become a millstone today. The English public is willing to accept high taxation, poor public services and the erosion of their rights and liberties so long as, in the words of an Indian tourist, ‘there is beer in the pubs and football on the television’.

RESERVE

‘Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget. For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet.’

G. K. Chesterton, The Secret People (1915)

‘My father and he had one of those English friendships which begin by avoiding intimacies and eventually eliminate speech altogether.’

Jorge Luis Borges

Modesty does not need to be defended, but English politeness, which started life as a noble virtue, is often mistaken for diffidence, aloofness or even effeminacy. Americans privately remark that, to their ears, all Englishmen sound gay – even James Bond.

GOOD HUMOUR

English humour is as old as the V-sign lofted by archers in the Hundred Years War to show off the tools of their trade to opposing forces. The French did not find this funny and would cut off the first two fingers of captured bowmen’s right hands.

English comedians are aided by the grammar of their language. Unlike most other modern European languages, the meaning of a sentence in English is conferred by word order rather than case endings, which means that punchlines can be hidden from the listener.

The modern English sense of humour flows naturally from other national characteristics acquired in the meantime. Stoicism becomes laughter in the face of adversity, while reserve leads to a fondness for double meanings.

ECCENTRICITY

‘The English like eccentrics. They just don’t like them living next door.’

Julian Clary

Eccentrics have to be unusually talented if they are not to be regarded more plainly as twits. If they cannot be talented, then they must be rich. The famous eccentrics of the past tended to be upper-class and male, for if they were not, it would have been difficult for many of them to avoid being sent to an asylum. The English affection for eccentrics is part of the national sense of humour, but to a cynic it amounts to an elitist contempt for the ordinary, coupled with the hypocritical attitude that forgiveness can be bought.

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The Public Schools

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‘I wish I had been born early enough to have been called a “Little Englander”. It was a term of sneering abuse, but I should be delighted to accept it as a description of myself. That little sounds the right note of affection. It is little England I love. And I considered how much I disliked Big Englanders, whom I saw as red-faced, staring, loud-voiced fellows, wanting to go and boss everybody about all over the world, and being surprised and pained and saying, “Bad show!” if some blighters refused to fag for them.’

J. B. Priestley in English Journey (1934)

KEY STATISTICS

In England, 7 per cent of pupils attend independent schools. They produce 38 per cent of all candidates gaining three A grades or better at A-level.

Independent schools save the state £2 billion every year that would otherwise be spent on educating over 600,000 children in state schools.

Public schools receive about £90 million a year in fiscal benefits from their charitable status. They pay out around £300 million annually in scholarships and bursaries.

THE TEN MOST EXPENSIVE INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS

In order of fees per year for boarding pupils, and their alumni

Hurtwood House, Surrey (founded in 1970): £39,555. Emily Blunt, Hans Zimmer

Cheltenham Ladies College,† Gloucestershire (1853): £37,275. Kristin Scott Thomas, Bridget Riley, Lisa Jardine

Malvern St James,† Worcestershire (1853): £37,125. Barbara Cartland, Phyllida Lloyd, Penelope Leach

Malvern College, Worcestershire (1865): £36,288. Denholm Elliott, C. S. Lewis, Jeremy Paxman

Tonbridge School, Kent (1553): £36,288. Frederick Forsyth, E. M. Forster, Sir Colin Cowdrey

Harrow School,* Middlesex (1572): £36,150. Sir Winston Churchill, Lord Byron, Anthony Trollope, nineteen recipients of the Victoria Cross

Eton College,* Berkshire (1440): £35,721. Shelley, Aldous Huxley, John Maynard Keynes, George Orwell, nineteen prime ministers including David Cameron

Wycombe Abbey,† Buckinghamshire (1896): £35,700. Penelope Fitzgerald, Rachel Stirling

Winchester College,* Hampshire (1382): £35,610. Arnold Toynbee, Oswald Mosley, George Mallory, Freeman Dyson

Charterhouse, Surrey (1611): £35,529. William Makepeace Thakeray, Sir Anthony Caro, Peter Gabriel

* Denotes all-boys school.

† Denotes all-girls school.

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Perspectives on English Drunkenness

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‘The English are noted among foreigners for their persistent drinking.’

John of Salisbury (c. 1115–1180)

‘Everyone is drunk, but drunk joylessly, gloomily and heavily, and everyone is strangely silent. Only curses and bloody brawls occasionally break that suspicious and oppressively sad silence… Everyone is in a hurry to drink himself into insensibility… wives in no way lag behind their husbands and all get drunk together, while children crawl and run about among them.’

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Winter Notes on Summer Impressions (1863)

‘Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode, The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.’

G. K. Chesterton, The Rolling English Road (1922)

‘England is nothing but the last ward of the European madhouse, and quite possibly it will prove to be the ward for particularly violent cases.’

Leon Trotsky, Diary in Exile, entry for 11 April 1935

‘Terrified drinkers ducked for cover as a group of around sixty West Bromwich Albion fans attacked the Little Crown on Saturday afternoon. Innocent bystanders were caught in the mêlée as fighting raged out of control until the police stepped in with batons. The damage would cost £1,000 to fix, with numerous doors and windows smashed. Landlord Peter Coady was disgusted: “The smell was awful, people were heaving as they walked past. What kind of people would come prepared to fight with pigs’ intestines?”’

Great Barr Observer, February 2003

Despite a rich folklore, the English thirst may have been exaggerated. According to the Health Survey for England 2013, the average amount drunk each year increased from 9.8 litres of pure alcohol per capita to a modern-day peak of 11.6 litres in 2004. Since then it has since returned to 1990 levels, at 9.7 litres in 2012. This currently places the English at only 45th in the world league table of alcohol consumption, having reached 24th place in 2004.

The proportion of adults who indulge in binge drinking (defined as more than 8 units of alcohol in one day) at least once a week fell from 18 per cent in 2005 to 15 per cent in 2013.

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Sex and the English

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VITAL STATISTICS

• The average age for first sex is 16. (The global average is 17.)

• The average number of partners is twelve for men and eight for women, or ten overall. (The global average is nine.) Researchers claim that the gender disparity is due to respondents’ dishonesty – even in anonymous surveys.

• In 2013 English women reported having twice as many sexual partners as they reported having in 1990. Compared with 1990, they are also four times more likely to have had sex with a woman.

• 3.6 per cent of men and 7.9 per cent of women report having had a same sex partner.

• 42 per cent of women and 60 per cent of men aged 65–74 years reported having had at least one opposite-sex sexual partner in the previous year.

• 51 per cent are happy with their sex lives (compared with 36 per cent in Italy and 38 per cent in France).

• 5 per cent report a ‘monotonous’ sex life (compared with 6 per cent in Italy and 8 per cent in France).

• 10.8 per cent of men and 12.6 per cent of women report ever having had a sexually transmitted infection. (The global average is 13 per cent.)

• 4 per cent of Londoners claim to have made love on an aeroplane and 15 per cent on public transport.

• Bondage is most popular in the Midlands, where 40 per cent of men and women have experimented with handcuffs, blindfolds, restraints or whips. Midlanders are also the least likely to suffer from an STI (9 per cent).

• People in the north-west engage in the most risky behaviour, with 56 per cent prepared to have unprotected sex without knowing a partner’s sexual history. 57 per cent of the region’s women are satisfied with their sex lives, compared to only 42 per cent of men.

• Men and women in the north-east make the least faithful partners: 16 per cent confess to cheating.

• 20 per cent of people in London, Yorkshire and the north-east have filmed themselves or taken photos during sex.

• Yorkshire natives are the most fulfilled – 57 per cent reporting satisfaction with their sex lives. They have more sex on average than anyone else in the country, and 40 per cent have had sex in their parents’ bedroom.

Sources: National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal 2013), Durex Report 2006, Durex Report 2005

SEX: AVERAGE NUMBER OF TIMES PER YEAR, BY REGION

Yorkshire128South-West124North-East124Midlands123London119South117East Anglia116North-West115

(The average across the UK is 118 times a year.)

Source: Durex Report 2006

PORNOGRAPHY CONSUMPTION

The historic market town of Ware in Hertfordshire has more demand for online pornography than any other town in England, or indeed the UK. Townsfolk’s average visit to the popular PornHub website lasts 10 minutes and 37 seconds – a minute longer than the national average of 9 minutes and 42 seconds. However, even Ware’s demand is lower than the 11 minutes clocked up during the average American visit to the site.

THE ‘ENGLISH VICE’

According to the French, le vice anglais is flagellation, although it can refer to homosexuality.

Homosexuality

In 1991, the Observer newspaper published an interview in which the French Prime Minister, Edith Cresson, claimed that a quarter of all Englishmen were gay. The 57-year-old explained, ‘I remember from strolling about in London and French girls still make the same observation that the men in the streets don’t look at you. In Paris, the men look at you. A workman, or indeed any man, looks at passing women. The Anglo-Saxons are not interested in women as women; for a woman arriving in an Anglo-Saxon country, it is astonishing.’ Conservative MP Tony Marlow responded by attempting to pass a motion in the House of Commons titled, ‘This House does not fancy elderly French women’.

Sado-masochism

England is nevertheless noted for sado-masochistic sexual practices, as can be gathered from the numerous advertisements placed in London telephone boxes. The demise of ‘fagging’ and corporal punishment in England’s public schools has done nothing to end the ‘English Vice’.

NOTABLE VICE PIONEERS

Theresa Berkley (c. 1780–1836)

Brothel-keeper to the aristocracy from her premises in Hallam Street, London, she invented an automatic wheel for flogging clients and the ‘Berkley Horse’ – a padded rack to which a client would be strapped and then whipped.

Henry Spencer Ashbee (1834–1900)

Compiled the Index Librorum Prohibitorum of 1877, a catalogue of London brothels offering sado-masochistic services. He is also suspected to be the author of My Secret Life, an anonymous diary in eleven volumes detailing sex with 1,200 prostitutes over a forty-year whoring career.

George Mountbatten, Second Marquess of Milford Haven (1892–1938)

Prince Philip’s uncle and surrogate father amassed one of Europe’s largest collection of sado-masochistic pornography. He bequeathed it, along with a smaller but still impressive collection of sex toys, to the British Museum.

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Two Views of English Conversation

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‘Lady C— took me into the rose garden, and, having qualified her remarks with: “Look here. You’re a very good boy, and I like you very much”, forbade me peremptorily to talk to Beatrice about “things”. It bewildered me a little at the time because, I suppose, not being to the English manner born, I did not know just what “things” were. And it harassed me a little for the future, because I did not know at the time, so it appeared to me, what else to talk about but “things”. Nowadays I know very well what “things” are; they include, in fact, religious topics, questions of the relations of the sexes; the conditions of poverty-stricken districts – every subject from which one can digress into anything moving. That, in fact, is the crux, the Rubicon that one must never cross. And that is what makes English conversation so profoundly, so portentously, troublesome to maintain. It is a question of a very fine game, the rules of which you must observe. It is as if one were set on making oneself interesting with the left hand tied behind one’s back.’

Ford Madox Ford, in The Spirit of the People (1907)

‘In France it is rude to let a conversation drop; in England it is rash to keep it up. No one there will blame you for silence. When you have not opened your mouth for three years, they will think: “This Frenchman is a nice quiet fellow.” Be modest. An Englishman will say, “I have a little house in the country”; when he invites you to stay with him you will discover that the little house is a place with three hundred bedrooms. If you are a world tennis-champion, say, “Yes, I don’t play too badly.” If you have crossed the Atlantic alone in a small boat, say, “I do a little sailing.”’

André Maurois, in Three Letters on the English (1938)

3

NATIONAL HEROES

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Sir Francis Drake

(1540–96)

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PIRACY AND EXPLORATION

Drake was the son of a Devon yeoman and joined the family pirate fleet of Jack Hawkins when he was 18. The interference of the Spanish authorities in his business dealings gave him a lifelong hatred of Spain and a thirst for retribution against the country’s king.

His first captaincy was command of a slave trading ship, but he made his fortune by ambushing Spanish silver trains in 1572, helped by a band of escaped slaves who sought revenge on Spain. Elizabeth I gave him a privateering commission in 1572, giving him licence to plunder Spanish shipping.

In 1577, Drake set out with five ships to explore the Pacific coast of the Americas and raid any Spanish interests he came across. After sacking several cities in the West Indies, it is thought that he landed near what is now San Francisco in 1579 and claimed the lands of Nova Albion (New England) for Elizabeth I. The exact location was hidden and the records in England later burned to frustrate Spanish spies. On Drake’s return in 1580, after he had circumnavigated the globe, the queen knighted him aboard his ship, The Golden Hind. He was the first man to survive a circumnavigation, Magellan having died. The queen’s share of the booty was £300,000 – more than the crown’s annual income.

John Cooke, Drake’s companion on his circumnavigation of the globe, described him as a ‘tyranous and cruell tirant’, guilty of ‘murder… venome… conceyved hatred’ and ‘moaste tyranicall blud spilling’.

DRAKE’S WAR

The mission that ‘singed the King of Spain’s beard’ was the raid on Cadiz in 1587. Drake destroyed twenty-six enemy ships and thousands of tons of stores set aside for the invasion of England. He occupied one of Spain’s main ports for three days and delayed the attempted invasion by a year.

Drake was Vice Admiral of the fleet that defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588, famously joining his ship after finishing his game of bowls. While Philip II lamented that ‘God is an Englishman’ upon hearing of the Armada’s destruction, it was widely believed in Spain that Satan helped Drake win his battles. The devil is also supposed to have helped Drake build a barn at one point, as well as create a stream by diverting water from a Dartmoor river along the course to Plymouth followed by his horse, but apparently he could not save him from yellow fever. Drake died at Puerto Bello in Panama and was buried at sea in 1596.

THE LEGEND OF DRAKE’S DRUM

A drum he took on his circumnavigation and on his final voyage now hangs on the wall of Buckland Abbey at Yelverton, near Plymouth. According to legend, the instrument begins to beat all by itself at times when England is in danger. In 1940, several seamen on the boats that evacuated the troops from Dunkirk and officers stationed on the Hampshire coast claimed to have heard ‘a very incessant beat, pause, two sharp beats in succession, one sharp beat’.

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The Duke of Marlborough

(1650–1722)

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MARLBOROUGH’S EARLY BATTLES

John Churchill was the son of a Member of Parliament, Sir Winston Churchill. He first learned military strategy and field tactics from books in the library at St Paul’s School in London and went on to become Europe’s pre-eminent military commander prior to the rise of Napoleon.

In 1672 he was sent to help the French king Louis XIV in his war against the Dutch. Louis appointed him colonel of the English regiment, but despite his exploits he was able to forge a friendship with the Dutch prince William of Orange, who later came to the English throne as William III. In 1691 he was imprisoned in the Tower of London for several months under suspicion of treason. His crime was to object to the patronage William bestowed on so many Dutchmen in preference to English candidates.