0:00:02 > 0:00:05'It seems to me that you need a lot of courage
0:00:05 > 0:00:09'or a lot of something to enter into others, into other people.
0:00:10 > 0:00:14'We all think that everyone else lives in fortresses, in fastnesses,
0:00:14 > 0:00:17'behind moats, behind sheer walls,
0:00:17 > 0:00:20'studded with spikes and broken glass.
0:00:20 > 0:00:24'But, in fact, we inhabit much punier structures.
0:00:24 > 0:00:28'We are, as it turns out, all jerry-built or not even.
0:00:28 > 0:00:30'You can just stick your head under the flap of the tent
0:00:30 > 0:00:33'and crawl right in, if you get the OK.'
0:00:35 > 0:00:39MUSIC: "The Lark Ascending" by Vaughan Williams
0:01:26 > 0:01:29We're definitely an island and you're reminded of that every day,
0:01:29 > 0:01:32because the weather changes a dozen times
0:01:32 > 0:01:34in the course of the day.
0:01:34 > 0:01:35It's island weather.
0:01:35 > 0:01:40And, if anything shapes a national character,
0:01:40 > 0:01:44I think weather is perhaps the most important thing of all.
0:01:55 > 0:01:59The English feel that they are distinct from Europe
0:01:59 > 0:02:03and a very deep resistance to the euro.
0:02:03 > 0:02:06But also tugged across the Atlantic, too.
0:02:06 > 0:02:09So, it's a good location,
0:02:09 > 0:02:14just off the corner of this great Eurasian mass
0:02:14 > 0:02:16and directed across the Atlantic.
0:02:19 > 0:02:23Martin Amis is one of Britain's leading writers today.
0:02:23 > 0:02:26His work includes London Fields,
0:02:26 > 0:02:28Money, The Information,
0:02:28 > 0:02:30Experience and Lionel Asbo.
0:02:33 > 0:02:35His novels display a fierce and ironic vision
0:02:35 > 0:02:37of a country that's deeply uneasy with the loss
0:02:37 > 0:02:40of its colonial empire and international influence.
0:02:46 > 0:02:48An English person, I think,
0:02:48 > 0:02:52spends less time
0:02:52 > 0:02:54in self-justification.
0:02:54 > 0:02:57There is less to apologise for.
0:02:59 > 0:03:02Do you think it matters for a German to pretend
0:03:02 > 0:03:06they're Dutch when they travel?
0:03:06 > 0:03:08And you don't have to do that if you're English.
0:03:13 > 0:03:16'Till we have built Jerusalem
0:03:16 > 0:03:20'in England's green and pleasant land.'
0:03:26 > 0:03:28And he wanted the Council of Ministers to be the Senate.
0:03:28 > 0:03:31No! No, no.
0:03:39 > 0:03:41'We shall defend our island,
0:03:41 > 0:03:43'whatever the cost may be.
0:03:43 > 0:03:46'We shall fight on the beaches.
0:03:46 > 0:03:49'We shall fight on the landing grounds.'
0:03:59 > 0:04:01And racist abuse and racist attacks
0:04:01 > 0:04:04have no place in the Britain we believe in.
0:04:06 > 0:04:09CROWD CHANTS
0:04:09 > 0:04:14'And that the government of the people, by the people
0:04:14 > 0:04:16'and for the people...'
0:04:17 > 0:04:25# Glad tidings of a newborn king... #
0:04:26 > 0:04:29BELL TOLLS
0:04:54 > 0:04:56# O gee, I love him
0:04:56 > 0:04:58# I can't deny it
0:04:58 > 0:05:01# I'll be with him wherever he goes
0:05:01 > 0:05:05# He stands on the corner and whistles me out
0:05:05 > 0:05:08# He shouts oo-ey, oo-ey, are you coming out?
0:05:08 > 0:05:10# O gee, I love him... #
0:05:10 > 0:05:14When JG Ballard came to England in 1946, 1947,
0:05:14 > 0:05:18having been interned in Shanghai by the Japanese,
0:05:18 > 0:05:20he said, "Getting off the boat,
0:05:20 > 0:05:24"I was convinced that England had lost the war."
0:05:25 > 0:05:29And for many years, it looked like a defeated nation.
0:05:29 > 0:05:32Rationing,
0:05:32 > 0:05:36no street lights at night, dank.
0:05:36 > 0:05:41And this is the world described in Orwell's 1984.
0:05:41 > 0:05:46He was, in fact, writing about the physical furniture of 1948,
0:05:46 > 0:05:51where your socks were greasy under your feet
0:05:51 > 0:05:55and disintegrated after a couple of weeks.
0:05:55 > 0:05:57But that was the texture of Britain.
0:06:03 > 0:06:06# Alive, alive-O
0:06:06 > 0:06:10# Alive, alive-O
0:06:10 > 0:06:14# Alive, alive-O
0:06:14 > 0:06:19# Crying cockles and mussels... #
0:06:23 > 0:06:27'This is The Festival.
0:06:27 > 0:06:31'Something Britain devised halfway through this century as
0:06:31 > 0:06:35'a milestone between past and future to enrich and enliven the present.
0:06:35 > 0:06:39'A diverse place of serious fun
0:06:39 > 0:06:41'and light-hearted solemnity,
0:06:41 > 0:06:45'reclaimed from the bomb wreck and the decay of years.
0:06:45 > 0:06:47'Here, in the heart of London.'
0:06:51 > 0:06:54In my teens, we got a little bit more prosperous.
0:06:54 > 0:06:57I've tried to describe this in fiction,
0:06:57 > 0:07:02that we were the exemplary family
0:07:02 > 0:07:03of the Golden Age.
0:07:05 > 0:07:10'They were the children of the Golden Age, 1948? to 1973.
0:07:10 > 0:07:13'Elsewhere known as Il Miracolo Economico,
0:07:13 > 0:07:17'Les Trente Glorieuses, Der Wirtschaftswunder.
0:07:17 > 0:07:20'The Golden Age, where they never had it so good.
0:07:20 > 0:07:22'In the Golden Age, progress music
0:07:22 > 0:07:25'was heard in the background by nearly everybody.
0:07:25 > 0:07:30'The first phone, the first car, the first house,
0:07:30 > 0:07:34'the first summer holiday, the first TV, all to progress music.'
0:07:36 > 0:07:39Modernity with a benign face
0:07:39 > 0:07:43and our family was exemplary.
0:07:43 > 0:07:49MUSIC: "The Lark Ascending" by Vaughan Williams
0:08:00 > 0:08:05My father's father was a clerk in Colman's Mustard
0:08:05 > 0:08:09with responsibility for South America, funnily enough.
0:08:09 > 0:08:12But he was obviously lower-middle-class
0:08:12 > 0:08:14in all sorts of ways, South London.
0:08:14 > 0:08:17Mildly, jokily anti-Semitic,
0:08:17 > 0:08:22appalled to see black people driving cars in Washington
0:08:22 > 0:08:27when he came to join us in America.
0:08:27 > 0:08:31Full of Philistine prejudices and so on.
0:08:31 > 0:08:33And I adored him.
0:08:33 > 0:08:36I was very poor when I was a baby,
0:08:36 > 0:08:39then things began to look up
0:08:39 > 0:08:44when my father's first novel was published when I was seven.
0:08:44 > 0:08:47And life visibly improved
0:08:47 > 0:08:50and continued to improve.
0:08:50 > 0:08:52But, even then, there was
0:08:52 > 0:08:56no question of bursting into the upper middle classes.
0:08:56 > 0:08:57You were still very...
0:08:57 > 0:09:02You were completely defined by your birth, not by your achievements.
0:09:02 > 0:09:06I look down on him, because I am upper class.
0:09:06 > 0:09:10I look up to him, because he is upper class.
0:09:10 > 0:09:13But I look down on him because he is lower class.
0:09:13 > 0:09:16I am middle-class.
0:09:16 > 0:09:19I know my place.
0:09:19 > 0:09:21I look up to them both.
0:09:21 > 0:09:25But I don't look up to him as high as I look up to him.
0:09:25 > 0:09:28Because he's got innate breeding.
0:09:28 > 0:09:30I have got innate breeding,
0:09:30 > 0:09:32but I have not got any money.
0:09:32 > 0:09:36So, sometimes, I look up to him.
0:09:36 > 0:09:38I still look up to him,
0:09:38 > 0:09:41because although I have money, I am vulgar.
0:09:41 > 0:09:43LAUGHTER
0:09:43 > 0:09:46But I am not as vulgar as him.
0:09:46 > 0:09:49So I still look down on him.
0:09:49 > 0:09:51I know my place.
0:09:55 > 0:09:58AMIS: When I was in my mid teens,
0:09:58 > 0:10:03I was obsessed by class and ambitious to rise up from,
0:10:03 > 0:10:07you'd have to say, lower middle-class origins.
0:10:07 > 0:10:11I remember doing a quiz in the Daily Mail,
0:10:11 > 0:10:13which was "How posh are you?"
0:10:13 > 0:10:17It was things like. "What do you call it - lavatory or toilet or WC?"
0:10:17 > 0:10:18And I'd... "lavatory".
0:10:18 > 0:10:21"Couch, settee or sofa?" Sofa.
0:10:21 > 0:10:24I knew I was doing terribly well in this quiz.
0:10:24 > 0:10:26I came to the last question, which was,
0:10:26 > 0:10:30"What would you name your son?"
0:10:30 > 0:10:36One was Montague and Chumley and Sebastian.
0:10:36 > 0:10:38And I thought, no, that's a bit too much.
0:10:38 > 0:10:40Quentin. I said, "No, won't be that."
0:10:40 > 0:10:45B was George, Henry, David.
0:10:45 > 0:10:46And I thought, "That's the one."
0:10:46 > 0:10:50But C was Keith, Terry and Martin.
0:10:52 > 0:10:54So I threw my Biro onto the table
0:10:54 > 0:11:01and knew that that was the end of that.
0:11:01 > 0:11:03And then, not long afterwards,
0:11:03 > 0:11:08I asked my father and I said, "What class are we?" when I was ten.
0:11:08 > 0:11:12He said, "We're too intelligent to go by that system.
0:11:12 > 0:11:15"We're the intelligentsia."
0:11:15 > 0:11:18Your final and most important lesson,
0:11:18 > 0:11:20how to spend to Daddy's lovely money.
0:11:20 > 0:11:22Cheque-books open, girls.
0:11:22 > 0:11:24Pens at the ready.
0:11:24 > 0:11:26No, no, no, Felicity.
0:11:26 > 0:11:29You couldn't possibly go shopping in Knightsbridge with one of those.
0:11:29 > 0:11:32A pen with style. A pen with elan.
0:11:32 > 0:11:35A Parker Lady in white rolled gold.
0:11:35 > 0:11:38Noughts just seem to roll from its tip.
0:11:38 > 0:11:40Signatures flow with a flourish.
0:11:40 > 0:11:44My father and I got hold of some early tape,
0:11:44 > 0:11:46one of his first TV interviews.
0:11:46 > 0:11:50And he sounded ridiculous. "He talked like that."
0:11:50 > 0:11:52In that la-di-da way,
0:11:52 > 0:11:56hoity-toity, giving himself airs.
0:11:56 > 0:11:59That accent has completely disappeared,
0:11:59 > 0:12:04but it was almost standard for anyone who was not working class
0:12:04 > 0:12:05to talk like that.
0:12:05 > 0:12:07BRASS BAND PLAYS
0:12:08 > 0:12:10THEY LAUGH AND SHOUT
0:12:26 > 0:12:29Then there was the rise of the regional accent
0:12:29 > 0:12:32and also the deliberate worsening of the accident.
0:12:32 > 0:12:36We see that now extending even to grammar.
0:12:36 > 0:12:39But the pressure is to join the herd.
0:12:39 > 0:12:44That's the main incentive
0:12:44 > 0:12:46for worsening your accent,
0:12:46 > 0:12:51is to become, at least in that respect, inconspicuous.
0:12:51 > 0:12:53'The 4th of June at Eton.
0:12:53 > 0:12:55'On this great day, the college presents itself
0:12:55 > 0:12:58'to its own world as its own world likes best to think of it,
0:12:58 > 0:13:01'as the preserve of the English ruling class
0:13:01 > 0:13:03'and the source of most of their virtues.
0:13:03 > 0:13:05'Its world is reminded that, on these playing fields,
0:13:05 > 0:13:08'the Battle of Waterloo was won by an unflappable uppercrust,
0:13:08 > 0:13:12'which has never ceased since then to maintain a rich supply
0:13:12 > 0:13:14'of top people from the same mould.'
0:13:14 > 0:13:15It's completely changed.
0:13:15 > 0:13:19When I was of that age, there was a vast gulf between
0:13:19 > 0:13:22state schools and public schools.
0:13:22 > 0:13:24It was a class gulf.
0:13:24 > 0:13:28But now I think it's no longer a reflection of class,
0:13:28 > 0:13:30it's a reflection of money.
0:13:30 > 0:13:33Money... Money has won.
0:13:33 > 0:13:36It had always won in America,
0:13:36 > 0:13:39but it's won in England, too.
0:13:39 > 0:13:42So, if you put your son's name down for Eton,
0:13:42 > 0:13:46it's because you can afford to do that,
0:13:46 > 0:13:50it's not because it's any class-granted right.
0:13:51 > 0:13:55I have no nostalgia for the class society,
0:13:55 > 0:14:00but I have no very great enthusiasm about the money society.
0:14:04 > 0:14:07"Raising a yellow finger to his lower lip,
0:14:07 > 0:14:11"Keith pondered the whole future of cheating.
0:14:11 > 0:14:13"Cheating was his life.
0:14:13 > 0:14:15"Cheating was all he knew.
0:14:15 > 0:14:18"Few people had that much money any more.
0:14:18 > 0:14:21"But it was quite clear that they'd never been stupider.
0:14:21 > 0:14:24"The old desire for a bargain had survived into a world
0:14:24 > 0:14:26"where there weren't any.
0:14:26 > 0:14:28"There weren't any bargains.
0:14:28 > 0:14:31"Unquestionably, you could still earn a decent living at it,
0:14:31 > 0:14:32"at cheating.
0:14:32 > 0:14:34"Yet no-one seemed to have thought through
0:14:34 > 0:14:37"the implications of a world in which everyone cheated."
0:14:40 > 0:14:43'White flannels on a green turf.
0:14:43 > 0:14:47'An English sight by no means exclusive to Sussex.
0:14:47 > 0:14:49'But cricket is played here with
0:14:49 > 0:14:51'such a death or glory gusto that many of
0:14:51 > 0:14:54'our greatest players think of Sussex
0:14:54 > 0:14:56'as the very nursery of the game.'
0:15:03 > 0:15:04- How's that?- How's that?
0:15:06 > 0:15:09To use another class axiom,
0:15:09 > 0:15:12football is a game for gentlemen played by hooligans,
0:15:12 > 0:15:16rugby is a game for hooligans played by gentlemen
0:15:16 > 0:15:20and cricket is a game for gentlemen played by gentlemen.
0:15:23 > 0:15:25CROWD CHEERS
0:15:25 > 0:15:28CROWD CHANTS
0:15:31 > 0:15:34- CHANTING:- We love you, we love you, we love you.
0:15:36 > 0:15:38HE SHOUTS
0:15:38 > 0:15:40It was nowhere near...
0:15:40 > 0:15:42Football's this tribal sport.
0:15:42 > 0:15:44It's a pack acting in concert.
0:15:44 > 0:15:48And that's perhaps why it attracts violent supporters.
0:15:48 > 0:15:50And it's never been like that for me.
0:15:50 > 0:15:56It's more, slightly more, aesthetic appreciation, in my case.
0:15:56 > 0:15:59If it's a match between England and Germany,
0:15:59 > 0:16:01a sort of mass hysteria comes over you
0:16:01 > 0:16:05and I am invaded by the emotions of religion and war.
0:16:05 > 0:16:09And I don't like it.
0:16:09 > 0:16:12And I can't watch those matches sometimes.
0:16:12 > 0:16:15I very much distrust the feelings it awakens in me.
0:16:17 > 0:16:20CROWD GROANS
0:16:20 > 0:16:23I hate the opponents and I love my team
0:16:23 > 0:16:28and it's shameful, but real.
0:16:30 > 0:16:33BAND PLAYS
0:16:56 > 0:17:01The true hooligan, the violence is what they're interested in.
0:17:01 > 0:17:04The thrill of violence.
0:17:04 > 0:17:07You read accounts of organised football violence
0:17:07 > 0:17:12and there are middle-aged men in tracksuits running backwards,
0:17:12 > 0:17:15briefing a column of young thugs, saying,
0:17:15 > 0:17:17"It's going to go off. It's going to go off."
0:17:17 > 0:17:18There's a lot of energy.
0:17:18 > 0:17:20And it is paramilitary,
0:17:20 > 0:17:24and obviously to do with the salient fact about British life,
0:17:24 > 0:17:29which is that it's a nation that has suffered a truly dramatic
0:17:29 > 0:17:33decline in the middle of the last century
0:17:33 > 0:17:36and it's just beginning to...
0:17:36 > 0:17:38Well, it's working its way through that.
0:17:39 > 0:17:43'Autumn 1956. And crisis in the Middle East.'
0:17:43 > 0:17:47There was Suez, perhaps, where we tried to behave like a major power
0:17:47 > 0:17:51and got humiliatingly brought to heel by the Americans.
0:17:51 > 0:17:55But we've accepted, really, that we're a second
0:17:55 > 0:18:01or even a third echelon power without much...without disasters.
0:18:01 > 0:18:03CROWD CHANTS
0:18:03 > 0:18:10But it's an assertion of that kind of self-righteous...
0:18:10 > 0:18:14The common man given power over someone,
0:18:14 > 0:18:20as they might have done in India in the 19th century.
0:18:20 > 0:18:23It's a very ugly sight.
0:18:23 > 0:18:30And to see people experimenting with power is always atrocious.
0:18:32 > 0:18:36It's a feeble copy of imperial power, but that's...
0:18:37 > 0:18:39The impulse comes from there, I think.
0:19:23 > 0:19:26It's hard to remember or even believe
0:19:26 > 0:19:30how one colour England used to be.
0:19:30 > 0:19:35I was seven or eight, I was already stealing cigarettes,
0:19:35 > 0:19:41by the time I met the first black person in my experience.
0:19:41 > 0:19:43And it was very weird.
0:19:43 > 0:19:49I was going with my father to meet a Rhodesian academic and,
0:19:49 > 0:19:52on the bus, he patiently schooled me.
0:19:52 > 0:19:54He said, "He's going to be black.
0:19:54 > 0:19:57"He's going to have a black face, black hands.
0:19:57 > 0:19:58"He's going to be black."
0:19:58 > 0:20:02And I was thinking, "Yeah," you know, "I understand.
0:20:02 > 0:20:05"Why is he going on about it so much?"
0:20:05 > 0:20:08I was ushered into the room with my father
0:20:08 > 0:20:10and there he was
0:20:10 > 0:20:12and I burst into tears and said,
0:20:12 > 0:20:13"You've got a black face."
0:20:16 > 0:20:21And I felt terrible and I knew it was an awful thing to do and say.
0:20:21 > 0:20:24But it was such a shock to my small system.
0:20:33 > 0:20:36MUSIC: "The Lark Ascending" by Vaughan Williams
0:20:42 > 0:20:47In the later half of the 20th century, what helped England through
0:20:47 > 0:20:51was ideology of multiculturalism
0:20:51 > 0:20:56and anti-imperialism and levelism.
0:20:56 > 0:20:58So losing your empire didn't seem so bad,
0:20:58 > 0:21:00because you didn't want an empire.
0:21:00 > 0:21:03You were ashamed of ever having had an empire.
0:21:03 > 0:21:07And that...that sweetened the pill of decline.
0:21:07 > 0:21:10MUSIC: "The Lark Ascending" by Vaughan Williams
0:21:30 > 0:21:33Multiculturalism was tremendously powerful
0:21:33 > 0:21:35for a good two or three decades, I would say.
0:21:35 > 0:21:38It is probably weaker now than it used to be,
0:21:38 > 0:21:42because it's a luxury, that ideology.
0:21:42 > 0:21:46It's what you do when you have money in the bank.
0:21:46 > 0:21:49And now there is no money in the bank
0:21:49 > 0:21:53and that kind of pan-tolerance will contract,
0:21:53 > 0:21:58because it's too...altruistic for hard times.
0:22:11 > 0:22:13There is great tolerance now
0:22:13 > 0:22:16and almost a sort of harmonial feeling,
0:22:16 > 0:22:23but in rough areas, it's just as bad as it ever was.
0:22:23 > 0:22:26It's not like America. America is...
0:22:26 > 0:22:29The great thing about America is that it's an immigrant society,
0:22:29 > 0:22:33and a Pakistani in Boston can say, "I'm an American,"
0:22:33 > 0:22:36and all he's doing is stating the obvious.
0:22:36 > 0:22:42But a Pakistani in Preston who says, "I'm an Englishman,"
0:22:42 > 0:22:46that statement would raise eyebrows for the reason
0:22:46 > 0:22:50that there's meant to be another layer of being English.
0:22:50 > 0:22:52That it is...
0:22:52 > 0:22:55that there are other qualifications
0:22:55 > 0:22:57other than being a citizen of the country.
0:22:57 > 0:23:00And it has to do with white skin
0:23:00 > 0:23:06and the habits of what is regarded to be civilised society.
0:23:06 > 0:23:10And recognisable, bourgeois society.
0:23:10 > 0:23:13POP MUSIC PLAYS
0:23:15 > 0:23:19POP MUSIC MORPHS INTO CEREMONIAL MUSIC
0:23:30 > 0:23:33'London, and the State Opening of Parliament,
0:23:33 > 0:23:36'the occasion on which the people see their Queen
0:23:36 > 0:23:38'in her most royal estate.
0:23:38 > 0:23:41'And Balmoral in Scotland,
0:23:41 > 0:23:43'where a young mother spends precious summer days
0:23:43 > 0:23:44'with her family.
0:23:44 > 0:23:46'Two pictures of the same woman,
0:23:46 > 0:23:47'which tell, in part,
0:23:47 > 0:23:50'something of the mysterious bonds that unite...'
0:23:50 > 0:23:53My father used to hang out with the Queen a bit,
0:23:53 > 0:23:55went to lunch there several times, and he was knighted by her.
0:23:55 > 0:24:01He was very keen on her and even used to have erotic dreams about her.
0:24:01 > 0:24:04And I said to him, "What happens in these dreams of yours?"
0:24:04 > 0:24:06And he said, "Well, nothing much," he said.
0:24:06 > 0:24:10"She's on my lap, and I'm feeling her tits and kissing her."
0:24:10 > 0:24:14ALL: God save the Queen! God save the Queen!
0:24:14 > 0:24:17'At her coronation, her husband, Prince Philip,
0:24:17 > 0:24:20'kisses her cheek and swears allegiance,
0:24:20 > 0:24:23'mitigating something of the loneliness of being Queen.'
0:24:23 > 0:24:25And I said, "What does the Queen say in your dreams?"
0:24:25 > 0:24:28He said, "Well, I'm saying, 'Come on, let's go somewhere.'
0:24:28 > 0:24:32"And she says, 'No, Kingsley, we mustn't.' Or, 'We can't.' "
0:24:32 > 0:24:34CHEERING
0:24:35 > 0:24:39The royal family are a peculiarly British institution,
0:24:39 > 0:24:44but it does have one remarkable quality.
0:24:44 > 0:24:47On days like the Coronation or the Jubilee,
0:24:47 > 0:24:51a peculiar atmosphere envelops the entire country.
0:24:51 > 0:24:55And it's...it's entirely irrational,
0:24:55 > 0:24:57but entirely benign.
0:24:57 > 0:25:03And usually, when irrationality visits a country, there's not a...
0:25:03 > 0:25:06to use an old phrase...there's not a virgin or an unbroken window
0:25:06 > 0:25:10left in the entire country after 12 hours of that.
0:25:10 > 0:25:17# Long live our noble Queen
0:25:17 > 0:25:19# God save... #
0:25:19 > 0:25:24It is nearing the end of the road... the monarchy.
0:25:24 > 0:25:28It's connected with our love of Upstairs, Downstairs...
0:25:28 > 0:25:31those country house dramas.
0:25:31 > 0:25:34It's nostalgia for that class society.
0:25:34 > 0:25:38It's all connected. It can't not be connected.
0:25:38 > 0:25:40But, again, relatively harmless.
0:25:42 > 0:25:45For a novel, The Pregnant Widow,
0:25:45 > 0:25:49I had my hero change subjects
0:25:49 > 0:25:54at university in his second year.
0:25:54 > 0:25:57So during this very long summer holiday,
0:25:57 > 0:26:01in which most of the action is set in this Italian castle,
0:26:01 > 0:26:05he reads the entire English novel over three months,
0:26:05 > 0:26:08starting with Richardson, Clarissa -
0:26:08 > 0:26:11five volumes of hideous prurience.
0:26:11 > 0:26:15And in that, the formative period of the English novel,
0:26:15 > 0:26:20the only way that a heroine can have sex is by being drugged.
0:26:20 > 0:26:26And that ties in with fantasies, female fantasies, of being ravished.
0:26:26 > 0:26:29And I've talked to women about this, and they've said,
0:26:29 > 0:26:33"It is a good fantasy, because... especially when you're young,
0:26:33 > 0:26:36"because if you enjoy it, it's not your fault."
0:26:36 > 0:26:41So, again, feelings of guilt very much to the fore.
0:26:41 > 0:26:44But when we get to Fielding,
0:26:44 > 0:26:47who's a near contemporary of Richardson,
0:26:47 > 0:26:50there is a sort of division, a class division is made,
0:26:50 > 0:26:53where a farm girl can have sex,
0:26:53 > 0:26:56and a decadent society lady can have sex,
0:26:56 > 0:26:59but Sophia Western, in Tom Jones,
0:26:59 > 0:27:01can't have sex, because she's the heroine.
0:27:01 > 0:27:04It's not compatible with being a heroine.
0:27:04 > 0:27:08In Jane Austen, going forward,
0:27:08 > 0:27:10in all six of her novels,
0:27:10 > 0:27:13there will be a woman, a young girl of good family,
0:27:13 > 0:27:16who errs in that direction.
0:27:16 > 0:27:21The great exception is Elizabeth Bennet in Pride And Prejudice,
0:27:21 > 0:27:25where it's perfectly clear that she is, far and away,
0:27:25 > 0:27:27the most sexual of Jane Austen's heroines.
0:27:27 > 0:27:30Mr Darcy!
0:27:31 > 0:27:32Miss Bennet!
0:27:32 > 0:27:35Towards...
0:27:35 > 0:27:37ten pages from the end of the book,
0:27:37 > 0:27:40Mr Bennet takes Elizabeth aside
0:27:40 > 0:27:42and says,
0:27:42 > 0:27:44"Do you really love Mr Darcy?"
0:27:44 > 0:27:47And the reader, by this time, is horrified,
0:27:47 > 0:27:49because we've been rooting
0:27:49 > 0:27:51for Darcy and Elizabeth throughout.
0:27:51 > 0:27:53And the way that's achieved
0:27:53 > 0:27:56is because they're absolutely made for each other, those two.
0:27:56 > 0:27:58We can tell that at once,
0:27:58 > 0:28:00and that's why
0:28:00 > 0:28:04there is such a passionate longing for them to be married.
0:28:04 > 0:28:08But he takes Elizabeth aside and says, "Do you love Mr Darcy?"
0:28:08 > 0:28:12Cos... "I know your lively talents, Elizabeth.
0:28:12 > 0:28:17"You could be neither happy nor respectable in a loveless marriage."
0:28:17 > 0:28:22Respectable - that's an astounding thing for Jane Austen to write,
0:28:22 > 0:28:27with the clear implication that if Elizabeth married Darcy without love,
0:28:27 > 0:28:29that she would have affairs.
0:28:32 > 0:28:36In vain, I have struggled. It will not do.
0:28:36 > 0:28:38My feelings will not be repressed.
0:28:38 > 0:28:42You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.
0:28:42 > 0:28:47There are always ways of doing sex without actually doing it.
0:28:47 > 0:28:50There's always been lots of stuff going on,
0:28:50 > 0:28:53but it wasn't a part of civilised society.
0:28:53 > 0:28:57It wasn't up for discussion... or even acknowledgement.
0:28:57 > 0:29:01And the novel is very much connected with the civilised discourse.
0:29:01 > 0:29:04There were, of course, sub-forms of the novel
0:29:04 > 0:29:06that were rampantly sexual,
0:29:06 > 0:29:09but not in the drawing rooms and farmhouses of England.
0:29:11 > 0:29:17A lot of hypocrisy, also a lot of suppressed rage.
0:29:17 > 0:29:23Erm...you know, and this goes on quite deep into the 20th century.
0:29:23 > 0:29:25My father's first novel,
0:29:25 > 0:29:27Lucky Jim...
0:29:27 > 0:29:32I wondered why there was this furious humour.
0:29:32 > 0:29:37Luckily, the anger takes the form of humour, and it is a very funny book.
0:29:37 > 0:29:41But I realised that everyone in that novel is a virgin.
0:29:41 > 0:29:44Those who aren't married are virgin.
0:29:45 > 0:29:52The top of society and the bottom of society had the freedom, for different reasons,
0:29:52 > 0:29:56to indulge what everyone was thinking about all the time.
0:29:56 > 0:30:00But the huge middle-class didn't have that outlet.
0:30:00 > 0:30:02FAST-PACED MUSIC
0:30:05 > 0:30:09'To say nothing of the daring of women who braved the infernal machines
0:30:09 > 0:30:12'of the pleasure beach with, here and here, a nonchalant laugh,
0:30:12 > 0:30:15'and, here and there, a ladylike scream, perhaps.'
0:30:26 > 0:30:29'And it behoves a gallant escort to put a protective arm
0:30:29 > 0:30:34'about a lady's shoulders, seeing that that's why he invited her in the first place.
0:30:36 > 0:30:41'And there's still the excitement of evening to come.'
0:30:46 > 0:30:49MUSIC DROWNS SPEECH
0:30:58 > 0:31:03Getting on good terms with pleasure is not an English talent, I don't think.
0:31:03 > 0:31:07There is a kind of grimness in the English nature.
0:31:07 > 0:31:12It's been said that the British feel Schadenfreude about themselves.
0:31:12 > 0:31:16They exalt in their own misery.
0:31:16 > 0:31:19A little strong, that,
0:31:19 > 0:31:22but there's definitely something in it.
0:31:22 > 0:31:26I don't know where it comes from, except...
0:31:26 > 0:31:28centuries of Puritanism.
0:31:29 > 0:31:33And of course the weather.
0:31:33 > 0:31:36It's a masochist's climate in Britain.
0:31:38 > 0:31:42What is the English vice? It's...spanking, is it not?
0:31:42 > 0:31:45So the French have always insisted.
0:31:45 > 0:31:48And a great part of Margaret Thatcher's appeal
0:31:48 > 0:31:53was that if you got too dependent on the social safety net
0:31:53 > 0:31:57and dependency culture, that she would smack your bottom.
0:31:58 > 0:32:01And when Christopher Hitchens met her,
0:32:01 > 0:32:05she did have a rolled-up bit of policy document
0:32:05 > 0:32:09and she said, "Turn around," and spanked him on the bottom,
0:32:09 > 0:32:12because she disagreed with him. I mean, it's all playful.
0:32:12 > 0:32:14CALYPSO MUSIC
0:32:27 > 0:32:30Certainly, the biggest social convulsion in my lifetime
0:32:30 > 0:32:34was the sexual revolution. You remember the Larkin poem...
0:32:34 > 0:32:38Sexual intercourse began In nineteen sixty-three
0:32:38 > 0:32:41(Which was a little late for me) -
0:32:41 > 0:32:43Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban
0:32:43 > 0:32:45And the Beatles' first LP.
0:32:51 > 0:32:54'The first clause in the revolutionary manifesto
0:32:54 > 0:32:58'went as follows: there will be sex before marriage.
0:32:58 > 0:33:01'Sex before marriage, for almost everyone.
0:33:01 > 0:33:06'And not only with the person that you're going to get married to.
0:33:06 > 0:33:09'It was very simple, everyone knew it,
0:33:09 > 0:33:11'everyone has seen it coming for years.
0:33:11 > 0:33:13'In certain quarters, though,
0:33:13 > 0:33:17'sex before marriage was a distressing development.
0:33:17 > 0:33:19'Who was distressed by it?
0:33:19 > 0:33:22'Those for whom there had NOT been sex before marriage.
0:33:22 > 0:33:25'Nicholas, when he was coming of age in the mid-1960s,
0:33:25 > 0:33:30'found himself involved in a series of long, boring, repetitive
0:33:30 > 0:33:33'and in fact completely circular arguments with his father.'
0:33:35 > 0:33:36That didn't happen to me,
0:33:36 > 0:33:40cos my father had already had that battle with his father.
0:33:40 > 0:33:44My father was almost embarrassingly permissive.
0:33:44 > 0:33:47One night, I had a girlfriend over,
0:33:47 > 0:33:49and in the middle of the night,
0:33:49 > 0:33:51she went to the bathroom,
0:33:51 > 0:33:52and I give her directions,
0:33:52 > 0:33:54but she went into my father's room,
0:33:54 > 0:33:57my father and stepmother's bedroom,
0:33:57 > 0:33:59waking them up and all that.
0:33:59 > 0:34:01And then I found a note under my...
0:34:01 > 0:34:04the next morning, a note under my door saying,
0:34:04 > 0:34:07"Your friend is very welcome to stay for breakfast,
0:34:07 > 0:34:11"but please be discreet about Mrs Lucy,"
0:34:11 > 0:34:13who was the cleaning woman.
0:34:13 > 0:34:16MUSIC: "A Taste Of Honey" by Herb Alpert
0:34:16 > 0:34:20And I'd spent my early, mid-teens, on into latish teens,
0:34:20 > 0:34:23spending hours trying to begin
0:34:23 > 0:34:30to seduce girls who were absolutely like fortresses, you know.
0:34:30 > 0:34:35And in my marathon seduction efforts,
0:34:35 > 0:34:39the most adamant were the working-class girls, by far.
0:34:39 > 0:34:44They really were living chastity belts.
0:34:44 > 0:34:47But with upper-middle and upper,
0:34:47 > 0:34:50there was much more immediate hope.
0:35:14 > 0:35:20I think, what you'd call the yellow press, or the red tops,
0:35:20 > 0:35:22that's another level of scurrility.
0:35:22 > 0:35:26In a way, it is consonant with British decline,
0:35:26 > 0:35:31in that it shows an absolute obsession
0:35:31 > 0:35:35with surfaces and superficialities,
0:35:35 > 0:35:38and perhaps that is in tune
0:35:38 > 0:35:42with the general coarsening of the British nature.
0:35:42 > 0:35:44They wouldn't be there unless there was something
0:35:44 > 0:35:49in the British character that wanted it to be so.
0:35:49 > 0:35:55I think the press is actually far more...vicious
0:35:55 > 0:35:59than the average Englishman or woman.
0:35:59 > 0:36:04We see this occasionally - we actually glimpse this, in that
0:36:04 > 0:36:06at the time of Princess Diana's death,
0:36:06 > 0:36:12newspapers were frantically putting on the cover
0:36:12 > 0:36:15pictures of Diana as an angel,
0:36:15 > 0:36:17sort of fluttering through the clouds,
0:36:17 > 0:36:21while wrenching out of the middle pages
0:36:21 > 0:36:25some scurrilous attack on her
0:36:25 > 0:36:30as a feckless slut who sleeps with Arabs.
0:36:36 > 0:36:38They were taken by surprise
0:36:38 > 0:36:41by this millennial sentimentality
0:36:41 > 0:36:43that was the response to her death.
0:36:43 > 0:36:46In fact, the man in the street and the woman in the street
0:36:46 > 0:36:48don't like that kind of viciousness
0:36:48 > 0:36:51and they are much more sentimental than the press,
0:36:51 > 0:36:54although sentimentality is, of course,
0:36:54 > 0:36:57the other side of the coin of brutality.
0:37:09 > 0:37:11Dashed shame, really.
0:37:11 > 0:37:13She was a fine old ship.
0:37:13 > 0:37:16They didn't mention the "old" bit when I booked my passage.
0:37:16 > 0:37:17Come off it, old chap.
0:37:17 > 0:37:20Still - pity she went down before we'd finished dinner.
0:37:20 > 0:37:24- Missed the liqueurs, what?- Could have done with a drop meself.
0:37:24 > 0:37:26Hear! Hear!
0:37:26 > 0:37:30- HE WHISPERS - I'm afraid I might have some rather bad news for some of you.
0:37:30 > 0:37:32Davis only had time to bring the port.
0:37:32 > 0:37:34It's my after-dinner tipple,
0:37:34 > 0:37:36but...what about the rest of you?
0:37:36 > 0:37:38I should say so, sir!
0:37:38 > 0:37:41- "Cock"-burns, is it?- "Cock"-burns?
0:37:41 > 0:37:43"Cock"-burns! Very good.
0:37:43 > 0:37:46Oh, you mean Cockburns! Yes.
0:37:46 > 0:37:48Special Reserve.
0:37:48 > 0:37:53VOICEOVER: After dinner, a bottle of port is really all you need.
0:37:55 > 0:37:58MARTIN AMIS: We'd be letting ourselves down if we didn't talk
0:37:58 > 0:37:59about English drunkenness,
0:37:59 > 0:38:04which has no equivalent in southern Europe, certainly.
0:38:04 > 0:38:07It's not considered amusing
0:38:07 > 0:38:10in France or Italy to be drunk.
0:38:10 > 0:38:15But if you go out on any night in any city in England,
0:38:15 > 0:38:19there are people in utter disarray with drink.
0:38:22 > 0:38:25You look out at a landscape and everyone's drunk.
0:38:25 > 0:38:27And it's not just at weekends.
0:38:29 > 0:38:32PUB HUBBUB
0:38:32 > 0:38:37But there is an atmosphere of hysterical festivity
0:38:37 > 0:38:41underwritten by potential violence.
0:38:42 > 0:38:45English drunkenness has always seemed to me
0:38:45 > 0:38:50very, very key to the national character.
0:38:55 > 0:38:58# What a rotten song... #
0:38:58 > 0:39:01It's the quest for oblivion, it's not for heightening
0:39:01 > 0:39:03your consciousness.
0:39:03 > 0:39:05It is the other element,
0:39:05 > 0:39:08it's this sort of feeding frenzy of drink
0:39:08 > 0:39:12that you see in every city every night in England.
0:39:12 > 0:39:17They drink to forget, forget their glorious past,
0:39:17 > 0:39:21reconcile themselves with their reduced present.
0:39:23 > 0:39:27It's drowning their sorrows,
0:39:27 > 0:39:30it's not celebratory, it's the opposite.
0:39:32 > 0:39:35That kind of self-punishing drinking
0:39:35 > 0:39:37departs from any notion of pleasure.
0:39:37 > 0:39:40There's something voulu about it,
0:39:40 > 0:39:44that the high spirits are kind of willed.
0:39:44 > 0:39:47Do the men really have to guffaw like that
0:39:47 > 0:39:49to show that they're having a good time?
0:39:49 > 0:39:52Do the women have to cackle with giggles
0:39:52 > 0:39:55quite as loudly as they do?
0:39:55 > 0:39:59There is a sort of tinge of desperation.
0:39:59 > 0:40:03There is that sense of an orgy in the vomitorium,
0:40:03 > 0:40:07making one wonder if English repression
0:40:07 > 0:40:10is still something that menaces young people, even today.
0:40:10 > 0:40:14The idea that only when you're completely lost to shame,
0:40:14 > 0:40:16because of drink,
0:40:16 > 0:40:20that you can then indulge yourself sexually.
0:40:22 > 0:40:26- NEWS REPORT:- The advanced party of up to 10,000 fans
0:40:26 > 0:40:29coming to Athens in search of a good time,
0:40:29 > 0:40:31a good tan and a good result.
0:40:33 > 0:40:36The Football Disorder Act is a response to scenes
0:40:36 > 0:40:38like these in Belgium last year...
0:40:38 > 0:40:40MARTIN AMIS: In the '60s,
0:40:40 > 0:40:43and when I started going just with friends and not with family,
0:40:43 > 0:40:46I started to feel what the English abroad do feel,
0:40:46 > 0:40:48which is hostility,
0:40:48 > 0:40:51a resentful sense of superiority,
0:40:51 > 0:40:55a great feeling of insecurity
0:40:55 > 0:40:59that the Continent is actually much more sophisticated and advanced
0:40:59 > 0:41:02then the home island.
0:41:02 > 0:41:04This is why English people get drunk
0:41:04 > 0:41:07when they go abroad. I mean, they get drunk when they stay at home, too.
0:41:07 > 0:41:11But they get drunk to
0:41:11 > 0:41:15overcome that feeling of insecurity which then turns into aggression.
0:41:15 > 0:41:20The pattern we all know and have seen many times.
0:41:21 > 0:41:24DANCE MUSIC PLAYS
0:41:32 > 0:41:35We talk about national characteristics
0:41:35 > 0:41:40and you have to have the freedom to generalise.
0:41:40 > 0:41:45But as soon as you get into negative characterisations, people get anxious.
0:41:45 > 0:41:49I remember my father writing in, it must have been about 1980,
0:41:49 > 0:41:53a little riff that you probably couldn't print now,
0:41:53 > 0:41:56which was quite mild, really, but he said...
0:41:56 > 0:41:58he was wondering if there was any correlation
0:41:58 > 0:42:01national character and national cuisine.
0:42:01 > 0:42:04He said, "Let's think. England.
0:42:04 > 0:42:06"Nice people, nasty food.
0:42:06 > 0:42:10"France. Nice food, nasty people.
0:42:10 > 0:42:14"Spain. Nice people, nasty food.
0:42:14 > 0:42:16"Italy. Nice people, nice food.
0:42:16 > 0:42:19"Germany. Nasty food, nasty people."
0:42:19 > 0:42:22MUSIC: "The Last Living Rose" by PJ Harvey
0:42:22 > 0:42:25# Goddamn Europeans
0:42:25 > 0:42:30# Take me back to beautiful England
0:42:30 > 0:42:35# And the great, damp filthiness of
0:42:35 > 0:42:39# Ages and battered books and
0:42:39 > 0:42:43# Fog rolling down behind the mountains
0:42:43 > 0:42:48# All the graveyards and dead sea captains
0:42:48 > 0:42:53# Let me walk through the stinking alleys
0:42:53 > 0:42:58# To the music of drunken beatings
0:42:58 > 0:43:02# Past the Thames River glistening
0:43:02 > 0:43:06# Like gold hastily sold
0:43:06 > 0:43:09# For nothing
0:43:10 > 0:43:12# Nothing...! #
0:43:26 > 0:43:28MUSIC: "Romance for Violin and Orchestra" by Dvorak
0:43:35 > 0:43:39English diffidence is in many ways a charming
0:43:39 > 0:43:43and endearing quality, I think.
0:43:43 > 0:43:48I remember I was teaching the novella Goodbye, Columbus, Philip Roth's first.
0:43:48 > 0:43:50If you remember, in the film
0:43:50 > 0:43:54he sees this gorgeous girl at the swimming club
0:43:54 > 0:43:57and comes home and rings her up.
0:43:57 > 0:44:00And I said to the class,
0:44:00 > 0:44:02"If this were an English novel,
0:44:02 > 0:44:06"it would need to be 300 pages long, because it would take him 120 pages
0:44:06 > 0:44:10"to pluck up the courage to telephone her in the first place."
0:44:10 > 0:44:12That is English diffidence.
0:44:12 > 0:44:18It may look like stiffness, but again, it's a worthy diffidence.
0:44:20 > 0:44:22And, very quickly,
0:44:22 > 0:44:24it melts, I think.
0:44:24 > 0:44:27After the initial reserve,
0:44:27 > 0:44:30you will find candour and friendliness.
0:44:32 > 0:44:36When you see the personal ads in America, they say,
0:44:36 > 0:44:40"Super-fit, non-smoking, handsome guy
0:44:40 > 0:44:44"wants to meet..." et cetera.
0:44:44 > 0:44:46In England, it would be,
0:44:46 > 0:44:52"Chain-smoking couch potato, loser...
0:44:52 > 0:44:58"and dope wants to meet..." et cetera, et cetera.
0:44:58 > 0:45:02That is a very
0:45:02 > 0:45:05clear difference between the two temperaments,
0:45:05 > 0:45:07the two national temperaments.
0:45:07 > 0:45:09THEY PLAY FOLK MUSIC
0:45:27 > 0:45:29PLAINTIVE REEL PLAYS
0:46:04 > 0:46:06There is something about cricket
0:46:06 > 0:46:09that is irreducibly and essentially English.
0:46:09 > 0:46:12This atmosphere of being a good sport.
0:46:12 > 0:46:17"It isn't cricket" means it's not, as it were, kosher.
0:46:17 > 0:46:21The foundational idea is that sport is not about winning,
0:46:21 > 0:46:25that it's about glory and honour.
0:46:25 > 0:46:27Someone watching the Tour de France said
0:46:27 > 0:46:30that drugs ruin the whole spectacle because there should be
0:46:30 > 0:46:34no other factors other than the human being and the bike,
0:46:34 > 0:46:37and that that was destroyed by a culture of drugging.
0:46:37 > 0:46:41That's what being a good sport means.
0:46:41 > 0:46:43All that is unthinkable.
0:46:43 > 0:46:50And that extends as much as it can into areas like warfare.
0:46:50 > 0:46:54It's statistically very plain that if you were a surrendering
0:46:54 > 0:46:58enemy combatant in the Second World War,
0:46:58 > 0:47:02you wanted to fall into the hands of British troops.
0:47:02 > 0:47:06Certainly not Russian troops, certainly not French troops,
0:47:06 > 0:47:09and preferably not American troops,
0:47:09 > 0:47:10but British troops.
0:47:10 > 0:47:13They had the highest survival rate.
0:47:16 > 0:47:19That's sportsmanship.
0:47:19 > 0:47:21That's...fairness.
0:47:22 > 0:47:24Straight bat, you know.
0:47:24 > 0:47:26Good play.
0:47:39 > 0:47:41HE PLAYS "LAST POST"
0:48:11 > 0:48:14Britain, I think rightly, derives
0:48:14 > 0:48:18a great deal of strength from its performance in the Second World War.
0:48:18 > 0:48:23Perhaps no other nation in Europe emerges from that war
0:48:23 > 0:48:27with, intact, either the humiliation
0:48:27 > 0:48:32of conquest or the humiliation of initiating the war,
0:48:32 > 0:48:35or the humiliation of collaboration.
0:48:35 > 0:48:37And, more materially, Hitler
0:48:37 > 0:48:41conquered a string of countries in a matter of days
0:48:41 > 0:48:43and sometimes a matter of hours.
0:48:43 > 0:48:45Denmark, 24 hours.
0:48:45 > 0:48:47France, 39 days.
0:48:47 > 0:48:49Yugoslavia, seven days.
0:48:49 > 0:48:52Greece, 12 days.
0:48:52 > 0:48:56And leading up to the attack on Russia,
0:48:56 > 0:48:58which, until halfway through 1941,
0:48:58 > 0:49:02looked as if it was going to be maybe 45 days.
0:49:02 > 0:49:05And the only defeat
0:49:05 > 0:49:08suffered by Germany in that time was the Battle of Britain,
0:49:08 > 0:49:11in 1940.
0:49:13 > 0:49:19'Methinks I see in my mind a mighty and puissant Nation
0:49:19 > 0:49:23'rousing herself like a strongman after sleep,
0:49:23 > 0:49:26'and shaking her invincible locks.
0:49:26 > 0:49:30'Methinks I see her as an Eagle
0:49:30 > 0:49:33'mewing her mighty youth,
0:49:33 > 0:49:36'kindling her un-dazzled eyes
0:49:36 > 0:49:38'at the full midday beam,
0:49:39 > 0:49:44'purging and un-scaling her long-abused sight
0:49:44 > 0:49:48'at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance.'
0:50:06 > 0:50:09And we... Churchill, "We stood alone."
0:50:09 > 0:50:13It's not quite true - there were all these governments in exile
0:50:13 > 0:50:15that were standing with us, but we stood alone
0:50:15 > 0:50:17and we did prevail in the end,
0:50:17 > 0:50:22although as a minor player by the time the war ended.
0:50:22 > 0:50:26I think that shapes... is fit to shape
0:50:26 > 0:50:30how you see yourself for generations.
0:50:30 > 0:50:33NEWSREEL: This is Belsen, notorious German death camp.
0:50:33 > 0:50:35The last of Belsen's living dead
0:50:35 > 0:50:38are treated by British medical crews
0:50:38 > 0:50:40before transfer to a live field hospital.
0:50:40 > 0:50:42MARTIN AMIS: There was always a feeling,
0:50:42 > 0:50:45and I think, perfectly intelligible feeling,
0:50:45 > 0:50:49that a great evil had been bested in the end.
0:50:49 > 0:50:56And all sorts of jingoistic feelings remained for...decades after the war.
0:50:56 > 0:50:59NEWSREEL: British flame tanks fire the flimsy building.
0:50:59 > 0:51:04Belsen is erased from the Earth. Buchenwald, Dachau,
0:51:04 > 0:51:05Nordhausen...
0:51:05 > 0:51:07MARTIN AMIS: Germany has made superhuman
0:51:07 > 0:51:11efforts to come to terms with its past.
0:51:12 > 0:51:15And still wants to talk about it,
0:51:15 > 0:51:17and is not shying away from it.
0:51:17 > 0:51:22It seems to me that France has made no efforts at all in that direction,
0:51:22 > 0:51:26that the myth of the Resistance nation
0:51:26 > 0:51:29has completely supplanted the reality
0:51:29 > 0:51:31of the collaborationist nation.
0:51:31 > 0:51:35It takes all my powers of imagination and empathy
0:51:35 > 0:51:42to think myself into a French skin or a German skin for that reason.
0:51:42 > 0:51:47How tremendously diminished I would be.
0:51:47 > 0:51:54And that the English performance in the war,
0:51:54 > 0:51:56and conduct...
0:51:58 > 0:52:01is something to be proud of.
0:52:01 > 0:52:03And that is not the case elsewhere.
0:52:06 > 0:52:08You're talking about the influence...
0:52:08 > 0:52:12Listen...listen...
0:52:13 > 0:52:16You come to Speakers' Corner with the delusion
0:52:16 > 0:52:20that you could be an agent, winding people up.
0:52:20 > 0:52:22Then there were surpluses between nations, if you like,
0:52:22 > 0:52:25so under capitalism, Marx argued...
0:52:25 > 0:52:28- Yay!- You're lost in your head.
0:52:28 > 0:52:29Bye!
0:52:29 > 0:52:34That happens every time I bring the Koran up to a true Muslim.
0:52:34 > 0:52:37Jesus preached only three years, how could he have a big Bible?
0:52:37 > 0:52:41Would you please shut up? I'm not talking to you, I'm talking about you!
0:52:41 > 0:52:44When the Queen sits on the seat,
0:52:44 > 0:52:49then she becomes the personification of the Crown.
0:52:49 > 0:52:51Are you authorised by Her Majesty?
0:52:51 > 0:52:54No, no, no, that's correct.
0:52:54 > 0:52:57If one's allowed to be proud of
0:52:57 > 0:52:59one's nationality, then
0:52:59 > 0:53:04you would have to advance British history as
0:53:04 > 0:53:10a model of moderation compared to the histories of most other countries.
0:53:10 > 0:53:15England had its revolution a century earlier than the French.
0:53:15 > 0:53:18Parliamentary democracy well-established
0:53:18 > 0:53:20in the 18th century.
0:53:20 > 0:53:25The Civil War not atrocious, as civil wars usually are.
0:53:27 > 0:53:29It was fashionable for a while
0:53:29 > 0:53:32to say that the strength of Russian literature
0:53:32 > 0:53:36had to do with the bloodiness of Russian history.
0:53:36 > 0:53:38That somehow the stakes were higher
0:53:38 > 0:53:42because of the violence of that evolution,
0:53:42 > 0:53:44but British poetry
0:53:44 > 0:53:46is the strongest on the planet,
0:53:46 > 0:53:51rivalled perhaps only by Iran, funnily enough.
0:53:51 > 0:53:56And yet British history is not all blood and mire.
0:54:00 > 0:54:05I am utterly comfortable with being English, as Americans might say.
0:54:05 > 0:54:08It's a source of quiet pride.
0:54:08 > 0:54:11MUSIC: "Romance for Violin and Orchestra" by Dvorak