What Does It Mean to Be English?

As the rapid rise of Reform prompts urgency and alarm, Taylor feels “something deeper and more uncomfortable is also being asked of us: to invest in the quieter work that surfaces both our nation’s ghosts and our neglected traditions of care, so as to tend to the soil that keeps growing Farages.” Over four articles, she reflects on the fragility of the English identity: “not bedrock but wet clay”, a “quagmire of histories and deep narratives” that is “shaped and reshaped by the stories we allow ourselves to tell.” We are encouraged to imagine and pursue projects, processes, places and practices – an effective “accumulation of small, messy, unglamorous acts” – that face into three paradoxes: “seeding liberatory futures, while refusing to ignore the rot…addressing today’s hardships, while facing modernity’s lies… and tending belonging, while unapologetically naming harm.” She hopes for an Englishness “truer, humbler and more entangled with the land and the people who call this place home.” Also see Parts 2, 3, 4