Prime Time 7, Coursebook plus Semester Self-checks

1 The British character Reading: Portraying the English a) Read the text below and make notes of the facts that are described. b) When finished, reorganise your notes in a fact file. The English today 1  Fact file Principalities A principality is a country that is ruled by a prince or a princess. Following his conquest of Wales, Edward I made his eldest son Edward “Prince of Wales” in 1301. Ever since, the English monarch’s eldest son has borne the title. However, although the present heir to the throne bears the title, it is purely symbolic. Today Wales is not a principality in the true sense of the word. F 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 Being English used to be easy. They were one of the most easily identified peoples on earth, recognised by their language, their manners, their clothes and the fact that they drank tea by the bucketload. It is all so much more complicated now. When, occasionally, we come across someone whose stiff upper lip, sensible shoes or tweedy manner identifies them as English, we react in amusement: the conventions that defined the English are dead and the country’s ambassadors are more likely to be singers or writers than diplomats or politicians. The imperial English may have carried British passports – as did the Scots, Welsh, and some of the Irish – but they really didn’t need to think too hard about whether being “English” was the same as being “British”: the terms were virtually interchangeable. Nowadays, nothing will so infuriate a Scot as to confuse the terms English and British, for England’s Celtic neighbours are increasingly for striking out on their own. Elections in May 1999 to the new Scottish parliament and Welsh Assembly were, predictably, trumpeted by the Labour Party (which had invented the whole idea of devolved governments) as strengthening the Union. Perhaps so. But it is unquestionably changed. Scotland, at least, has always been a nation, with its own legal and educational system, and civic and intellectual tradition. Now it has its own government and it is hard to think of political institutions which, once given power, have not sought more of it. The language has begun to reflect this changed relationship. Where a year or two ago events in Scotland were talked of as regional, they are increasingly spoken about as “national”. The BBC has even issued instructions to its staff on the unacceptability of any longer talking of Wales as a “principality”. Then there is the problem of Europe. Who knows how the collective ambition or delusion that has gripped the European political élite will end up? And then there is the damaging awareness that neither Britain, nor any other nation, can singlehandedly control the tides of capital that determine whether individual citizens will eat or starve. Increasingly, the main business of national governments is the culture of their citizens. These four elements – the end of empire, the cracks opening in the so-called United Kingdom, the pressures for the English to plunge into Europe, and the uncontrollability of international business – set me wondering. What did it mean to be English? Although these are political questions, this is not a political text in the narrow sense of the word. It set out to try to discover the roots of the present English anxiety about themselves by travelling back into the past, to the things that created that instantly recognisable ideal Englishman and Englishwoman who carried the flag across the world. And then I tried to find out what had become of them. Some of these influences were relatively easy to spot. Obviously the fact that they were born on an island rather than living on a continental landmass had had an effect. They came from a country where Protestant reformation had put the church firmly in its place. They had inherited a deep belief in the freedom of the individual. Others were not easy to find. Why, for example, do the English seem to enjoy feeling so persecuted? What 12 The British today Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv