Or walking on the shadow side, let’s call it – “On the inability of the english to fraternise”.
What is it about us, as if a gap of 20km makes us in some way unable to be friendly with the people over there? An island race? I am enjoying reading Norman Davies’s extended demolition job of that notion; Vanished Kingdoms… (2011),The Isles… (1999), and ‘Not Forever England’ in Europe, East and West (2006).
Call me obstinate if you like (judged by the opinion polls, I am clearly in the minority), but I like this thing of being european. It is a big topic! So here is one way of making a comparison ‘feuilleton style’.
‘Feuilleton style’? I have recently come accross a splendid website which provides a summary of the best current Unter der Stück pieces of writing out of Mitteleuropa, and they are ALL IN ENGLISH! – signandsight.com
And there among the pages and pages of good stuff, was that article describing the habit of “self-imposed national isolation”. Ah yes! An article about David Cameron’s Veto (2011)? No, actually the article was talking about the behaviour of Serbia over the last few years.
Bizarre of course comparing Serbia with England, or the nostalgia for a ‘Greater Serbia’ with that Daily Mail way of longing for a ‘United Kingdom’. Norman Davies has an even better way of describing the state of (self-imposed national isolation) sentimentalist mind – “Ukania”.
Ukania: the mouse that roared – like the Grand Duchy of Fenwick. Or Ruritania: Somewhere that never was, and soon enough will no longer be.