Every Sunday

No one knows quite what the United Kingdom is, least of all the UK or me. Is it Britain? Is it Great? Four countries, or three or two or one? London imposed on the rest? Last colony of the British Empire? A national blindspot, perhaps no one thought to liberate us, with our other little islands left flagging around the world.

One and a half thousand years of muddling through, of fudges, of ‘constructive’ ambiguity. Intolerantly tolerant. Feudally subservient and irrepressibly rebellious. Deeply dysfunctional, most peaceful of places. Harbinger of the new world, increasingly irrelevant. Post-modern utopia, ancient establishment. Cosmopolitan, riven by caste and class. Safeguard against tyranny, ruled by a king. There’s nowhere I understand less and yet somehow still feel quite so at home.