The English
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And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England’s pleasant pastures seen!
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
- William Blake
And did those feet? And was the holy Lamb of God? Well? Yes or no? What a profoundly English poem: sweeping and enormous yet vacant and ironic. That’s how the English are with everything, especially religion. Nobody else is like that with their religion. The Arabs didn’t add a sassy little knowing wink when they were founding Islam. They were direct: we have a prophet, peace be upon him, and he lived here, in this town, in this year, and this is the book that he wrote, and the reason there aren’t any pictures of him is because when anybody tries to draw one, they have to die. Jews, Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, they're all straight-up-and-down-know-where-you-stand-type-operators.
But the Anglicans, where do you start? Henry VIII had six wives and was obviously an evil man. All English people will acknowledge this. And yet, he is the founder of their religion. Nobody else, anywhere, will merrily concede that the founder of their religion was evil. The Scientology people, despite all evidence to the contrary, insist that L. Ron Hubbard was a tremendous person. The Mormons continue running a defence for Joseph Smith, no matter how silly that may seem. But Anglicans are entirely unperturbed by Henry VII’s monstrous deeds. They accept them. They make fresh BBC documentaries about them each year. Their cute and cuddly religion was founded by a vicious wife-murderer, and they are pleased by this charming particularity.
The English! Their whole religion, their entire culture, is nothing but a series of charming particularities. On what grounds does Henry VIII cut himself off from Christendom? What right does he have to lead The Church in and of England? Well, you have it there in Blake. It is because perhaps Christ maybe turned up at Glastonbury, possibly with his uncle, at some point in the completely unknown period between the Disputation and his baptism, thereby making it not 100% impossible that Christ founded a church in England, before starting his public ministry. Who knows? And did those? And did the? This is quintessential Englishness: say something insane but add a question mark.
Let us have a Queen, but let her be a Queen who has no power, because that’s more sensible. But also, make her robes and crown as grand as possible, because life has to be lived after all, but let’s very seldom get the Queen to wear them, because that wouldn’t be practical.
And let us have sport, because sport is exciting, but let’s only have cricket and soccer, the most sterile and protracted sports conceivable, so that nobody get’s too carried away. But also, let’s get utterly carried away by getting massively drunk while monstrous hoodlums in football regalia beat each other to death in the street.
Let us say the most dirty and foul things about sex and defecation. But also, let’s develop a fiendishly complicated system of euphemisms and sarcasm so that nobody ever actually says what they mean on this haunting and unusual island.
Let us champion of liberty and reasonableness, and have sixty seven CCTV cameras for every one person. And the name of the show is Dr. Who, but the character's name isn't Dr. Who, the character's name is 'The Doctor’.
And when those foreigners get it wrong, when they have no Queen, or a Queen with power, or no interest in sport, or interest in exciting sports, or say something dirty, or abstain from saying something dirty, or abolish liberty, or allow for liberty, or call him Dr. Who, who knows, maybe that will make us feel important again? And did those? And did the?