Watching the English

CONCLUSION

At the beginning, I set out to discover the 'defining characteristics of Englishness' by closely observing distinctive regularities in English behaviour, identifying the specific hidden rules governing these behaviour patterns, and then figuring out what these rules reveal about our national character. A sort of semi-scientific procedure, I suppose. Well, systematic, at least. But despite all the confident-sounding noises I was making in the Introduction, I had no idea whether or not it would work, as this approach to understanding a national character had not been tried before.

It seems to have worked. Or maybe that's a bit presumptuous. What I mean is that this approach has certainly given me a better understanding of the 'grammar' - or 'mindset' or 'ethos' or 'gemeingeist' or 'cultural genome' or whatever you want to call it - of Englishness. Now, when I witness some apparently bizarre or ludicrous English behaviour (as I write this, we are in the middle of the Christmas-party season) I can say to myself, for example, 'Ah, yes: typical case of social dis-ease, medicated with alcohol and festive liminality, + humour + moderation'. (I don't usually say it out loud, because people would think I was bonkers.)

But the point of this Englishness project was not to allow me to feel quietly smug and omniscient. The idea was that other people might find it helpful too. As you know, I've been puzzling all this out as we went along, chapter by chapter, so the book has been a bit like one of those maths tests where the teacher says you have to 'show the workings-out' rather than just putting down the final answer. This means that if you think I've got the final answer to the 'what is Englishness?' question wrong, at least you can see exactly where I made my mistakes. It also means that, at this point, you know at least as much as I do about the defining characteristics of Englishness we've been trying to identify. I don't have anything up my sleeve to pull out for a grand finale. You could write this final chapter yourself if you felt like it.