nation draft England
An old country that rarely talks about itself, fond of understatement, queues, pubs and self-mockery, still working out where Englishness ends and Britishness begins.
Stonehenge · garethwiscombe, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Understanding an English person in 5 minutes
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The nation that forgot it was a nation
England has been one kingdom for over a thousand years, since Æthelstan in the 920s, and it is by far the largest part of the United Kingdom, home to about 84% of its people. Perhaps because it never had to fight for its existence, the English long used "English" and "British" as if they meant the same thing. In the 2021 census 56.8% of people in England called themselves British only, while about three in ten chose an English identity.
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
- The Making of English National Identity — Krishan Kumar, Cambridge University Press (2003)
- National identity, England and Wales: Census 2021 — Office for National Statistics, ONS (2022)
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Liberty, law and muddling through
Many English people believe their country's freedoms grew slowly and peacefully, from Magna Carta in 1215 through the civil wars and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 to votes for all. That story is too tidy, but it shaped real values: respect for Parliament and the rule of law, distrust of zealots and grand theories, and a preference for compromise and gradual reform over revolution.
- Magna Carta (with a new commentary) — David Carpenter, Penguin Classics (2015)
- 1688: The First Modern Revolution — Steve Pincus, Yale University Press (2009)
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
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An island story, and an empire
From the Armada to 1940, the English have told their history as that of a small island that stood up to continental tyrants. That same island built the largest empire in history, on trade, conquest and the Atlantic slave trade. Pride, guilt and indifference about the empire coexist, and arguments over statues, museums and school history are often arguments about who the English are.
- Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 — Linda Colley, Yale University Press (1992)
- Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain — John Darwin, Allen Lane (2012)
- Black and British: A Forgotten History — David Olusoga, Macmillan (2016)
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Class, industry and the North–South divide
England was the first industrial nation, and its northern and Midland cities were the workshops of the world. Class, signalled by accent, school, food and even the word for the evening meal, still matters more than many English people like to admit. Since the decline of heavy industry, the gap in wealth, health and opportunity between London and the South-East and much of the North has become one of the country's sorest points.
- The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective — Robert C. Allen, Cambridge University Press (2009)
- The Making of the English Working Class — E. P. Thompson, Victor Gollancz (1963)
- Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour — Kate Fox, Hodder & Stoughton (2014)
- Marching to the Fault Line: The 1984 Miners' Strike and the Death of Industrial Britain — Francis Beckett and David Hencke, Constable (2009)
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Understatement, irony and politeness
The anthropologist Kate Fox describes English social life as governed by unwritten rules: endless talk about the weather, apologising when someone else bumps into you, orderly queues, and a horror of boasting or "making a fuss". Humour is the default mode, especially irony and self-deprecation, and saying the opposite of what you mean ("not bad" for wonderful) is a national art.
- Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour — Kate Fox, Hodder & Stoughton (2014)
- The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius — George Orwell, Secker & Warburg (1941)
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A country remade by migration
Since the Empire Windrush docked in 1948, people from the Caribbean, South Asia, Africa, Ireland, Eastern Europe and elsewhere have remade England. Curry is a national dish, the national football team reflects the country's diversity, and Britain has had a Hindu prime minister. In 2021 about one in four people in England and Wales did not identify as White British. Migration is also one of the most divisive issues in politics, as the Brexit vote showed.
- Black and British: A Forgotten History — David Olusoga, Macmillan (2016)
- Ethnic group, England and Wales: Census 2021 — Office for National Statistics (2022)
- Brexitland: Identity, Diversity and the Reshaping of British Politics — Maria Sobolewska and Robert Ford, Cambridge University Press (2020)
The story
Anglo-Saxon England
410 – 1065 The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and the making of England
After Roman rule ends, Germanic settlers found small kingdoms in lowland Britain, and under pressure from the Vikings the kings of Wessex unite them into one kingdom of England.
- The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England — Marc Morris, Hutchinson (2021)
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
- Wales and the Britons, 350–1064 — T. M. Charles-Edwards, Oxford University Press (2013)
Read more
- The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England — Marc Morris, Hutchinson (2021)
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
- Wales and the Britons, 350–1064 — T. M. Charles-Edwards, Oxford University Press (2013)
This is where the English got their name, their language and many of their places. Shires, towns and parishes laid out before 1066 still shape the map, and Alfred and Æthelstan are remembered as the founders of a country that, unusually for Europe, has existed as one kingdom for over a thousand years. It is also why English identity is so bound up with continuity and with the idea of being an old, settled nation.
When Roman rule in Britain collapsed in the early fifth century, settlers from what is now northern Germany and Denmark, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes of tradition, crossed the North Sea and founded small kingdoms across lowland Britain.
England is the creation of the West Saxon kings: Alfred saved the last English kingdom from the Danes and his grandson Æthelstan turned Wessex into England, giving the English a single kingdom, law and language long before most European nations.
Seen from the west, this is how the Britons, the island's older people, lost most of it to incomers who called them "wealas", foreigners, the root of the word "Welsh", a loss mourned in the earliest Welsh poetry.
The Capetian kingdom, the Hundred Years' War and Joan of Arc
A small royal domain around Paris grows into a kingdom, survives a century of war with England, and finds a heroine in a teenage girl from Lorraine.
- The Hundred Years War, Volume I: Trial by Battle — Jonathan Sumption, Faber and Faber (1990)
- Joan of Arc: A History — Helen Castor, Faber and Faber (2014)
- The Cambridge Illustrated History of France — Colin Jones, Cambridge University Press (1994)
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
Read more
- The Hundred Years War, Volume I: Trial by Battle — Jonathan Sumption, Faber and Faber (1990)
- Joan of Arc: A History — Helen Castor, Faber and Faber (2014)
- The Cambridge Illustrated History of France — Colin Jones, Cambridge University Press (1994)
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
The Hundred Years' War gave England Crécy and Agincourt, the longbowmen and Shakespeare's Henry V, and it helped turn the French-speaking Plantagenet elite into English people. Losing France by 1453 made England an island kingdom, and the habit of seeing the French as the friendly old enemy dates from these centuries.
When Hugh Capet was elected king of West Francia in 987, he directly ruled little more than the area around Paris and Orléans; great dukes and counts, some richer than he was, held the rest. Over three centuries his descendants, the Capetians, patiently enlarged the royal domain through marriage, inheritance and war.
In English memory the war is a story of underdog victories, the "happy few" of Agincourt, and of English becoming the language of the nation again, used in Parliament and the law courts and by Chaucer.
Normans & Plantagenets
1066 – 1484 The Norman Conquest
William of Normandy defeats Harold II at Hastings and replaces almost the entire English ruling class with a French-speaking Norman elite.
- The Norman Conquest — Marc Morris, Hutchinson (2012)
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
Read more
- The Norman Conquest — Marc Morris, Hutchinson (2012)
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
1066 is the one date every English schoolchild knows, and it is the last time England was successfully invaded. It explains why English is a hybrid of Germanic and French words, why the great castles and cathedrals look as they do, and why ideas of class in England were long tinged with the sense that the people at the top came from somewhere else.
On 14 October 1066 Duke William of Normandy defeated and killed King Harold II at the Battle of Hastings, and was crowned King of England on Christmas Day. Within twenty years almost the entire English aristocracy and senior clergy had been replaced by Normans and other French-speakers.
The Conquest was a catastrophe for the English, who were dispossessed and ruled by foreign lords; from the seventeenth century radicals spoke of a "Norman Yoke" that had taken away ancient Anglo-Saxon liberties.
Other historians stress that William took over and strengthened an already efficient English state, and that the Conquest tied England more closely into Europe, bringing new churches, castles and learning.
Magna Carta
Rebel barons force King John to agree a charter limiting royal power, which becomes a lasting symbol of the rule of law.
- Magna Carta (with a new commentary) — David Carpenter, Penguin Classics (2015)
- Magna Carta: an introduction — Claire Breay and Julian Harrison, British Library (2015)
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
Read more
- Magna Carta (with a new commentary) — David Carpenter, Penguin Classics (2015)
- Magna Carta: an introduction — Claire Breay and Julian Harrison, British Library (2015)
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
Magna Carta is the founding myth of English liberty: the idea that even the king is under the law, and that no one may be imprisoned without due process. Most of its clauses are long gone, but the principle still turns up whenever English people argue about rights, from juries to protest laws.
At Runnymede beside the Thames, in June 1215, King John agreed to a charter of liberties demanded by rebel barons, promising, among much else, that no free man would be imprisoned or dispossessed "except by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land".
Tudor England & the Reformation
1485 – 1602 The English Reformation and Anglicanism
Henry VIII breaks with Rome, his children swing England between Protestant and Catholic, and Elizabeth I settles a national church that becomes the root of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
- Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation — Peter Marshall, Yale University Press (2017)
- The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400–c. 1580 — Eamon Duffy, Yale University Press (1992)
- Reformation: Europe's House Divided, 1490–1700 — Diarmaid MacCulloch, Allen Lane (2003)
- Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World — Alec Ryrie, Viking (2017)
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
- Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 — Linda Colley, Yale University Press (1992)
Read more
- Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation — Peter Marshall, Yale University Press (2017)
- The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400–c. 1580 — Eamon Duffy, Yale University Press (1992)
- Reformation: Europe's House Divided, 1490–1700 — Diarmaid MacCulloch, Allen Lane (2003)
- Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World — Alec Ryrie, Viking (2017)
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
- Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 — Linda Colley, Yale University Press (1992)
The Reformation made England a Protestant nation and the Church of England its established church, with the monarch as Supreme Governor to this day. Few English people go to church now, but the parish church, the Prayer Book and the King James Bible shaped the language, the calendar and the landscape, and the ruined abbeys left by the dissolution are part of almost every English county.
Henry VIII broke with Rome not over doctrine but over the pope's refusal to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. The Act of Supremacy of 1534 made the king Supreme Head of the Church of England, and between 1536 and 1540 the monasteries were dissolved and their wealth seized.
The Reformation gave the English the Bible and prayer in their own language, freed the church from a foreign power, and produced the martyrs remembered in Foxe's Book of Martyrs, like Archbishop Cranmer, burned at Oxford in 1556.
Historians such as Eamon Duffy argue that late-medieval English Catholicism was vibrant and loved, and that the Reformation was largely imposed from above, destroying monasteries, shrines and a rich religious culture, and making martyrs of Catholics too.
For centuries English Protestants told the Reformation as the moment England became itself: independent of Rome, reading the Bible in English and destined to resist Catholic Spain and France.
Elizabeth I and the Spanish Armada
Elizabeth I's long reign settles England as a Protestant nation, sees off the Spanish Armada in 1588 and produces the age of Shakespeare.
- The Tudors: A Very Short Introduction — John Guy, Oxford University Press (2013)
- The Defeat of the Spanish Armada — Garrett Mattingly, Jonathan Cape (1959)
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
Read more
- The Tudors: A Very Short Introduction — John Guy, Oxford University Press (2013)
- The Defeat of the Spanish Armada — Garrett Mattingly, Jonathan Cape (1959)
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
The Elizabethan age is the English golden age of popular imagination: a small Protestant island standing up to a Catholic superpower, sea dogs like Drake, and Shakespeare at the Globe. The Armada story set a pattern, repeated in 1940, of England as a plucky island saved by the sea and its own nerve.
Elizabeth I reigned from 1558 to 1603, and in that time England became firmly Protestant, survived Catholic plots and the threat of invasion, and in 1588 saw a great Spanish fleet, the Armada, defeated and scattered. She never married, and turned that into a political image: the Virgin Queen, wedded to her people.
Stuarts, revolution & union
1603 – 1759 Civil war, republic and the Glorious Revolution
Parliament fights and defeats Charles I, executes him and rules England as a republic, before the monarchy returns and is finally bound by Parliament in 1688–89.
- God's Fury, England's Fire: A New History of the English Civil Wars — Michael Braddick, Allen Lane (2008)
- Going to the Wars: The Experience of the British Civil Wars, 1638–1651 — Charles Carlton, Routledge (1992)
- 1688: The First Modern Revolution — Steve Pincus, Yale University Press (2009)
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
Read more
- God's Fury, England's Fire: A New History of the English Civil Wars — Michael Braddick, Allen Lane (2008)
- Going to the Wars: The Experience of the British Civil Wars, 1638–1651 — Charles Carlton, Routledge (1992)
- 1688: The First Modern Revolution — Steve Pincus, Yale University Press (2009)
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
England's constitution, with a monarch who reigns but Parliament that rules, comes out of this century of upheaval. It also left the English with a lasting suspicion of standing armies, zealots and revolutions, and a preference for change by compromise. Cromwell is still argued over: statues, school lessons and Irish memory pull in very different directions.
In 1642 war broke out between Charles I and Parliament. Parliament's armies won, the king was tried and beheaded in January 1649, and England was ruled as a republic, eventually under Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector, until the monarchy was restored in 1660.
The wars were a struggle for liberty against a king who tried to rule without Parliament; they produced the first great English debates about democracy, from the Levellers at Putney to the Bill of Rights.
The execution of an anointed king and the rule of the army and the Puritans, who closed theatres and banned Christmas festivities, were a warning of where zeal leads; the Restoration was greeted with joy.
In Ireland, Cromwell is remembered above all for the massacres at Drogheda and Wexford in 1649 and the vast land confiscations that followed.
Empire and slavery
England, and from 1707 Britain, builds the largest empire in history on trade, conquest and the Atlantic slave trade, then abolishes slavery and, after 1945, gives up almost all of its colonies.
- Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain — John Darwin, Allen Lane (2012)
- Black and British: A Forgotten History — David Olusoga, Macmillan (2016)
- Legacies of British Slavery database — Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery, UCL, University College London
- Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World — Niall Ferguson, Allen Lane (2003)
- Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves — Adam Hochschild, Houghton Mifflin (2005)
Read more
- Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain — John Darwin, Allen Lane (2012)
- Black and British: A Forgotten History — David Olusoga, Macmillan (2016)
- Legacies of British Slavery database — Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery, UCL, University College London
- Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World — Niall Ferguson, Allen Lane (2003)
- Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves — Adam Hochschild, Houghton Mifflin (2005)
Empire is one of the most argued-about parts of English history. Some people feel pride in it, some feel shame, and many have mixed feelings or simply don't know much. Debates over statues, museum collections, school curricula and reparations are really debates about this history, and about who the English are now, in a country shaped by people from the former colonies.
From the seventeenth century England, and from 1707 the new Britain, built an empire that at its peak in the 1920s covered about a quarter of the world's land. For much of the eighteenth century Britain was also the world's leading slave-trading nation, before it abolished the slave trade in 1807 and slavery in most of its colonies in 1833.
Writers such as Niall Ferguson argue that, for all its crimes, the empire spread trade, the rule of law, railways, the English language and parliamentary government, and that Britain led the campaign to end the slave trade worldwide.
Historians such as David Olusoga and Shashi Tharoor argue that the empire was built on exploitation, slavery, famine and violence, that its wealth helped make Britain rich, and that Britain has never properly faced this history.
Many historians, such as John Darwin, see the empire as too vast and varied for a simple verdict: a patchwork of trading posts, settler colonies and conquered states, ruled in very different ways and experienced very differently.
The Union of 1707
After the Darien disaster, the Scottish and English parliaments merge to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, with Scotland keeping its own Kirk, law and schools.
- The Scots and the Union — Christopher A. Whatley, Edinburgh University Press (2006)
- The Scottish Nation 1700–2000 — T. M. Devine, Allen Lane (1999)
- The Darien Scheme — National Museums Scotland
- Scotland: A New History — Michael Lynch, Pimlico (1992)
- Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 — Linda Colley, Yale University Press (1992)
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
Read more
- The Scots and the Union — Christopher A. Whatley, Edinburgh University Press (2006)
- The Scottish Nation 1700–2000 — T. M. Devine, Allen Lane (1999)
- The Darien Scheme — National Museums Scotland
- Scotland: A New History — Michael Lynch, Pimlico (1992)
- Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 — Linda Colley, Yale University Press (1992)
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
For England the Union was mainly about security: making sure Scotland could not take a different, Catholic king and side with France. It created Great Britain, and with it a British identity that many English people have since used interchangeably with English, often to the irritation of the Scots, Welsh and Irish. As Scottish and Welsh home rule grew, English people have been left asking what Englishness means within the Union.
For a century after 1603 Scotland and England shared a monarch but little else. Scotland was poorer, its trade was squeezed by English laws that treated it as a foreign country, and its kings now lived in London. The 1690s were disastrous: harvests failed in the "ill years", and famine killed a sizeable share of the population in some regions.
A pragmatic, mutually beneficial partnership.
A deal done over the heads of the people by a small, partly bribed elite, against widespread popular opposition, which ended Scotland's independence and has left it outvoted at Westminster ever since.
For English ministers the Union was a wartime security measure, guaranteeing the Protestant Hanoverian succession and closing England's "back door" to France; over the next century a shared Protestantism, empire and war with France forged a common British identity on top of the old ones.
Industry & empire
1760 – 1913 The Industrial Revolution
Steam power, cotton mills, coal and railways make England the world's first industrial nation, creating vast new cities, a working class and new kinds of protest.
- The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective — Robert C. Allen, Cambridge University Press (2009)
- The Making of the English Working Class — E. P. Thompson, Victor Gollancz (1963)
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
Read more
- The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective — Robert C. Allen, Cambridge University Press (2009)
- The Making of the English Working Class — E. P. Thompson, Victor Gollancz (1963)
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
The Industrial Revolution made the England people recognise today: the great northern and Midland cities, the terraced streets, football clubs, brass bands, chapels and trade unions. Its decline in the twentieth century left the scars of the North–South divide, and the sense of a lost industrial greatness still runs through English politics.
From the mid-eighteenth century England became the first country in the world to industrialise. Machines driven by water and then steam transformed cotton spinning, coal powered iron-making and engines, and by the mid-nineteenth century railways linked factory towns that had grown from villages into great cities.
England led the world into the modern age, with inventions from the steam engine to the railway that eventually lifted billions out of poverty, and many English people are proud of that.
For those who worked in the mills and mines, industrialisation meant long hours, child labour, slums and early death, and every gain, from the vote to the ten-hour day, had to be fought for.
World wars & the welfare state
1914 – 1978 The two world wars
Britain fights both world wars from start to finish; the slaughter of the trenches and the defiance of 1940 become the two great shared memories of modern England.
- The Long Shadow: The Great War and the Twentieth Century — David Reynolds, Simon & Schuster (2013)
- The Myth of the Blitz — Angus Calder, Jonathan Cape (1991)
- The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth-Century History — David Edgerton, Allen Lane (2018)
- Their Finest Hour (speech of 18 June 1940) — Winston Churchill, International Churchill Society
- Churchill: Walking with Destiny — Andrew Roberts, Allen Lane (2018)
Read more
- The Long Shadow: The Great War and the Twentieth Century — David Reynolds, Simon & Schuster (2013)
- The Myth of the Blitz — Angus Calder, Jonathan Cape (1991)
- The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth-Century History — David Edgerton, Allen Lane (2018)
- Their Finest Hour (speech of 18 June 1940) — Winston Churchill, International Churchill Society
- Churchill: Walking with Destiny — Andrew Roberts, Allen Lane (2018)
Few things shape English national feeling like the wars. Poppies every November, the two-minute silence, the "Blitz spirit", Dunkirk and Churchill are touchstones of who many English people think they are, invoked in crises from the pandemic to Brexit. Younger and more diverse generations, and many historians, ask that the memory include the empire's soldiers and the wars' darker sides.
Britain entered the First World War in August 1914 and the Second in September 1939, and fought both until victory. The First World War killed around three-quarters of a million men from the United Kingdom; the Second killed fewer soldiers but brought the war to English cities, as German bombing in the Blitz of 1940–41 killed over 40,000 civilians.
In 1940 Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany when the rest of Europe had fallen, and ordinary people, through the Blitz and Dunkirk, showed the steady courage that saved freedom.
Historians such as Angus Calder and David Edgerton argue that Britain was never really "alone": it was backed by a vast empire, by American supplies and, from 1941, by the Soviet Union, and the myth of plucky isolation feeds a nostalgic, exceptionalist nationalism.
5 million Indian volunteers who fought for Britain and for the Bengal famine of 1943, in which around three million died while wartime policy put other priorities first.
The welfare state and the NHS
Labour's landslide in 1945 creates the modern welfare state, including the National Health Service, launched on 5 July 1948 by the Welsh miner's son Aneurin Bevan.
- The Five Giants: A Biography of the Welfare State — Nicholas Timmins, HarperCollins (2017)
- Aneurin Bevan: A Biography — Michael Foot, MacGibbon & Kee (1962)
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
Read more
- The Five Giants: A Biography of the Welfare State — Nicholas Timmins, HarperCollins (2017)
- Aneurin Bevan: A Biography — Michael Foot, MacGibbon & Kee (1962)
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
The NHS is the closest thing modern England has to a national religion: free at the point of use, paid for from taxes, and defended fiercely by voters of all parties. Arguments about waiting lists, funding and privatisation are among the most emotional in English politics.
In July 1945, weeks after victory in Europe, voters threw out Churchill and elected a Labour government with a landslide. It built the modern welfare state, nationalised coal, rail and other industries, and on 5 July 1948 launched the National Health Service, free to all at the point of use.
Windrush and postwar migration
The arrival of the Empire Windrush in 1948 symbolises the start of large-scale migration from the Caribbean, South Asia and Africa that turns England into a multi-ethnic country.
- An iconic and treasured record: The Empire Windrush passenger list — The National Archives (UK), The National Archives
- Black and British: A Forgotten History — David Olusoga, Macmillan (2016)
- Windrush Lessons Learned Review — Wendy Williams, Home Office (2020)
- Ethnic group, England and Wales: Census 2021 — Office for National Statistics (2022)
- Brexitland: Identity, Diversity and the Reshaping of British Politics — Maria Sobolewska and Robert Ford, Cambridge University Press (2020)
Read more
- An iconic and treasured record: The Empire Windrush passenger list — The National Archives (UK), The National Archives
- Black and British: A Forgotten History — David Olusoga, Macmillan (2016)
- Windrush Lessons Learned Review — Wendy Williams, Home Office (2020)
- Ethnic group, England and Wales: Census 2021 — Office for National Statistics (2022)
- Brexitland: Identity, Diversity and the Reshaping of British Politics — Maria Sobolewska and Robert Ford, Cambridge University Press (2020)
Modern England, from its food and music to its football team and its prime ministers, is unthinkable without postwar migration. The story is both a source of pride, celebrated on Windrush Day each 22 June, and of hurt: the racism the first arrivals faced, and the 2018 scandal in which some of them were wrongly treated as illegal immigrants.
On 22 June 1948 the ship Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury on the Thames carrying 1,027 passengers, 802 of whom gave a Caribbean country as their last place of residence.
Migrants from the Commonwealth answered Britain's call to rebuild after the war, staffed the NHS and public transport, and helped make England a more open, dynamic and creative country.
For some white English people, especially in older industrial towns, the pace of change has felt like something that happened to them without consent, a feeling politicians from Enoch Powell to the Brexit campaign have tapped into.
Thatcher to Brexit
1979 – today The miners' strike
Britain's miners strike for a year against pit closures and are defeated by Margaret Thatcher's government, hastening the end of the coal industry and the communities built around it.
- Marching to the Fault Line: The 1984 Miners' Strike and the Death of Industrial Britain — Francis Beckett and David Hencke, Constable (2009)
- The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners — Seumas Milne, Verso (1994)
- Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography — Charles Moore, Allen Lane (2019)
- History on Our Side: Wales and the 1984–85 Miners' Strike — Hywel Francis, Iconau (2009)
Read more
- Marching to the Fault Line: The 1984 Miners' Strike and the Death of Industrial Britain — Francis Beckett and David Hencke, Constable (2009)
- The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners — Seumas Milne, Verso (1994)
- Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography — Charles Moore, Allen Lane (2019)
- History on Our Side: Wales and the 1984–85 Miners' Strike — Hywel Francis, Iconau (2009)
The strike is one of the great dividing lines of modern England. In the former coalfields of Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Durham and the Midlands it still decides family loyalties, how people feel about the police and whether they will ever vote Conservative, and the poverty left by the pit closures fed the anger of "left-behind" towns decades later.
In March 1984 the National Coal Board announced pit closures, and miners in Yorkshire and then across most of Britain walked out. The strike lasted a year, the longest major strike in British history, before the miners returned to work in March 1985 without a deal, and over the following decade most of Britain's remaining coal mines closed.
The government deliberately set out to break the National Union of Mineworkers, using the police as a political weapon, most notoriously at Orgreave in June 1984, and destroyed whole communities with no plan for what came after.
Many pits were losing money, the strike was called without a national ballot, and its leader Arthur Scargill sought political confrontation; defeating it ended a decade in which unions had brought down governments, and was necessary to modernise the economy.
Most miners in Nottinghamshire and some other areas kept working, angry that there had been no ballot; many later formed a breakaway union and were called "scabs" for years afterwards.
The Brexit referendum
The UK votes by 51.9% to 48.1% to leave the European Union, with majorities in England and Wales outvoting Remain majorities in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
- Results and turnout at the EU referendum — The Electoral Commission (UK) (2016)
- How the United Kingdom voted on Thursday… and why — Lord Ashcroft Polls (2016)
- Brexitland: Identity, Diversity and the Reshaping of British Politics — Maria Sobolewska and Robert Ford, Cambridge University Press (2020)
- Englishness: The Political Force Transforming Britain — Ailsa Henderson and Richard Wyn Jones, Oxford University Press (2021)
Read more
- Results and turnout at the EU referendum — The Electoral Commission (UK) (2016)
- How the United Kingdom voted on Thursday… and why — Lord Ashcroft Polls (2016)
- Brexitland: Identity, Diversity and the Reshaping of British Politics — Maria Sobolewska and Robert Ford, Cambridge University Press (2020)
- Englishness: The Political Force Transforming Britain — Ailsa Henderson and Richard Wyn Jones, Oxford University Press (2021)
Brexit was decided above all in England, where 53.4% voted Leave, and it exposed divisions between cities and towns, young and old, graduates and non-graduates, and London and the rest. For many Leave voters it was a cry for control and for places long ignored; for many Remainers it was a loss of European identity. The argument shaped a decade of English politics and still lingers.
1% to leave the European Union, on a turnout of 72%. 5%, while Scotland and Northern Ireland voted Remain; the UK formally left on 31 January 2020.
Leaving restored national sovereignty and democratic control over laws, borders and money, and gave a voice to people in towns far from London whose concerns about immigration and deindustrialisation had been dismissed for decades.
Brexit was sold on false promises, has damaged trade and the economy, weakened the Union with Scotland and Northern Ireland, and took away younger people's right to live and work across Europe against the wishes of most of them.
8% Remain) were taken out by English votes, reviving the case for Scottish independence and Irish unity; see Scotland's "Brexit and divergence" and Ireland's "Brexit and the Irish border".
Core values & worldview
If you want to understand an English person, start with the fact that England has rarely had to explain itself. It has been one kingdom since the tenth century, was last successfully invaded in 1066, and spent centuries as the dominant partner in a union with Wales, Scotland and Ireland. As a result, many English people grew up treating “English” and “British” as interchangeable, to the lasting irritation of their neighbours, and only recently have they started asking what Englishness means on its own.
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
- The Making of English National Identity — Krishan Kumar, Cambridge University Press (2003)
A few values come up again and again.
Fair play and the rule of law. The English like to think of themselves as decent, tolerant and fair: queuing, “playing by the rules”, and believing that nobody, not even the government, is above the law. The story of liberty that runs from Magna Carta through Parliament’s defeat of Charles I to the Bill of Rights is told, sometimes smugly, as proof that England did freedom first.
- Magna Carta (with a new commentary) — David Carpenter, Penguin Classics (2015)
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
Moderation and muddling through. Grand ideologies tend to make the English uneasy. Orwell wrote that they have “a horror of abstract thought” and a preference for compromise; the country never had a written constitution, and is proud of changing slowly. Enthusiasm is suspect, and so is anyone who “takes themselves too seriously”.
- The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius — George Orwell, Secker & Warburg (1941)
- Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour — Kate Fox, Hodder & Stoughton (2014)
Privacy, reserve and humour. Kate Fox’s study Watching the English describes a people who find intimacy with strangers awkward and use rituals, especially talking about the weather, to manage it. Humour is the default: irony, self-deprecation and understatement are everywhere, and earnestness is quietly mocked. “Not bad” can mean excellent; “with respect” means the opposite.
- Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour — Kate Fox, Hodder & Stoughton (2014)
Class, half-denied. Class is less rigid than it was, but it still shapes how people speak, what they eat, where they shop and which schools their children attend. Many English people can place others by accent within seconds, and many are slightly embarrassed by that.
- Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour — Kate Fox, Hodder & Stoughton (2014)
- The Making of the English Working Class — E. P. Thompson, Victor Gollancz (1963)
Daily life & customs
About 57 million people live in England, most in towns and cities, with London by far the largest.
- England — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- National identity, England and Wales: Census 2021 — Office for National Statistics, ONS (2022)
- Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour — Kate Fox, Hodder & Stoughton (2014)
The calendar is shaped by Christian and folk festivals more than national ones. Christmas, with its crackers, mince pies and the monarch’s broadcast, is the biggest event of the year; Bonfire Night on 5 November marks the failure of the Catholic Gunpowder Plot of 1605 with fireworks; Remembrance Sunday in November brings poppies and silence. St George’s Day, 23 April, is not a public holiday and is only modestly celebrated, which itself says something about English reticence.
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
- The Making of English National Identity — Krishan Kumar, Cambridge University Press (2003)
Sport matters enormously. England gave the world modern football, and the Premier League is followed globally; England’s 1966 World Cup win is still invoked, and the women’s team, the Lionesses, won the European Championship in 2022 and again in 2025. Cricket, rugby, Wimbledon and horse racing each have their own tribes, often with class overtones.
- The Game of Our Lives: The Meaning and Making of English Football — David Goldblatt, Viking (2014)
England is now a largely secular country with a historic established church. In the 2021 census, 46.2% of people in England and Wales described themselves as Christian, 37.2% as having no religion and 6.5% as Muslim, with sizeable Hindu, Sikh and Jewish communities.
- Religion, England and Wales: Census 2021 — Office for National Statistics (2022)
Wounds & sensitivities
Deindustrialisation and the North. The closure of mines, mills, steelworks and shipyards from the 1970s onwards, and especially the defeat of the 1984–85 miners’ strike, left many northern and Midland towns poorer, older and angry at being forgotten by London. Margaret Thatcher’s name can still end a conversation in a former pit village.
- Marching to the Fault Line: The 1984 Miners' Strike and the Death of Industrial Britain — Francis Beckett and David Hencke, Constable (2009)
- The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners — Seumas Milne, Verso (1994)
War and loss. Almost every family lost someone in the world wars, and Remembrance is taken seriously. Jokes about the war dead, or careless use of the poppy, give real offence.
- The Long Shadow: The Great War and the Twentieth Century — David Reynolds, Simon & Schuster (2013)
Empire and race. Many English people feel defensive when outsiders, or fellow citizens, accuse Britain of crimes in its empire; many others, including many Black and Asian Britons, feel the history is still not faced honestly. The Windrush scandal of 2018 was a particular wound, because it touched people who had done everything asked of them.
- Black and British: A Forgotten History — David Olusoga, Macmillan (2016)
- Windrush Lessons Learned Review — Wendy Williams, Home Office (2020)
City tragedies. Some cities carry specific wounds: Liverpool and the 97 football fans who died at Hillsborough in 1989 and were falsely blamed for decades; London and the Grenfell Tower fire of 2017; Manchester and the arena bombing of 2017.
Being mocked as stuck-up, or as hooligans. The English are used to being cast as either posh and cold, or as lager-fuelled football fans abroad. Both stereotypes sting, partly because there is a grain of truth in each.
- Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour — Kate Fox, Hodder & Stoughton (2014)
Modern attitudes
Divided by Brexit. England voted 53.4% to leave the EU in 2016, but London and most big cities voted Remain, and younger and graduate voters were overwhelmingly against leaving. The vote revealed an England split by place, age and education more than by traditional class or party.
- Results and turnout at the EU referendum — The Electoral Commission (UK) (2016)
- How the United Kingdom voted on Thursday… and why — Lord Ashcroft Polls (2016)
- Brexitland: Identity, Diversity and the Reshaping of British Politics — Maria Sobolewska and Robert Ford, Cambridge University Press (2020)
English or British? People who feel more English than British tend to be older, whiter and more Eurosceptic; ethnic minority citizens in England are much more likely to call themselves British. The St George’s flag, once associated with the far right, has become more common at football tournaments, but it still makes some people uneasy.
- Englishness: The Political Force Transforming Britain — Ailsa Henderson and Richard Wyn Jones, Oxford University Press (2021)
- National identity, England and Wales: Census 2021 — Office for National Statistics, ONS (2022)
Socially liberal, mostly. England legalised same-sex marriage, together with Wales, in 2013, and most people are relaxed about religion, sexuality and family life. Immigration and the pace of change remain fiercely debated, especially in places that feel left behind.
- Brexitland: Identity, Diversity and the Reshaping of British Politics — Maria Sobolewska and Robert Ford, Cambridge University Press (2020)
Fond of the NHS, sceptical of politicians. The NHS is the institution the English say makes them proudest, even as they grumble about waiting lists. Trust in politicians is low, and satire of the powerful is a national sport.
- The Five Giants: A Biography of the Welfare State — Nicholas Timmins, HarperCollins (2017)
Not all English people are the same
North and South. Northerners often see themselves as friendlier, plainer-speaking and harder-working than southerners, whom they suspect of being soft and snobbish; southerners sometimes see the North as grim and backward. The jokes have a real economic edge: incomes, health and investment have long been higher in London and the South-East.
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
- Marching to the Fault Line: The 1984 Miners' Strike and the Death of Industrial Britain — Francis Beckett and David Hencke, Constable (2009)
Regions with their own identities. Cornwall has its own Celtic heritage and a revived Cornish language, and the Cornish are recognised as a national minority. Yorkshire, the North-East, the West Country and East Anglia all have strong regional pride and accents, from Geordie and Scouse to Brummie and West Country.
- England — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- The Making of English National Identity — Krishan Kumar, Cambridge University Press (2003)
London is its own world. The capital is younger, richer, more diverse and more liberal than the rest of England, and many outside it feel it runs the country for its own benefit.
- Brexitland: Identity, Diversity and the Reshaping of British Politics — Maria Sobolewska and Robert Ford, Cambridge University Press (2020)
Many heritages. Millions of English people have roots in Ireland, the Caribbean, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Africa, Poland and elsewhere. A British Indian in Leicester, a Pakistani-heritage family in Bradford, a Black Londoner and a white farmer in Herefordshire are all English, and may relate to the label very differently.
- Ethnic group, England and Wales: Census 2021 — Office for National Statistics (2022)
- Black and British: A Forgotten History — David Olusoga, Macmillan (2016)
Class and education. The divide between those who went to fee-paying “public” schools and Oxbridge and everyone else remains stark at the top of politics, law and the media.
- Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour — Kate Fox, Hodder & Stoughton (2014)
Meeting someone
Conversation starters
- The weather. The classic opener, and a safe one. Complaining about it together is a form of bonding.
- Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour — Kate Fox, Hodder & Stoughton (2014)
- Where they’re from. Ask about their town or region; many will enjoy explaining why it’s different from London.
- Football. Ask who they support, and be ready for a story of loyalty and suffering.
- The Game of Our Lives: The Meaning and Making of English Football — David Goldblatt, Viking (2014)
- Food and pubs. The best local pub, chippy or curry house, or a debate about how to make a proper cup of tea.
- TV and comedy. From Monty Python to The Office and The Great British Bake Off, shared jokes are a way in.
Topics to approach carefully
- “English” versus “British”. Don’t call a Scot, Welsh person or Northern Irish person English; and don’t assume every English person feels English rather than British.
- National identity, England and Wales: Census 2021 — Office for National Statistics, ONS (2022)
- Class and money. Asking someone’s salary or what their house cost is considered rude; jokes about accents can carry class baggage.
- Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour — Kate Fox, Hodder & Stoughton (2014)
- Brexit. It split families and friendships; let people tell you what they think before offering an opinion.
- Brexitland: Identity, Diversity and the Reshaping of British Politics — Maria Sobolewska and Robert Ford, Cambridge University Press (2020)
- Empire and the monarchy. Views range from pride to anger; avoid assuming either.
- Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain — John Darwin, Allen Lane (2012)
- Thatcher and the miners. In the former coalfields, this is personal history, not politics.
- Marching to the Fault Line: The 1984 Miners' Strike and the Death of Industrial Britain — Francis Beckett and David Hencke, Constable (2009)
Common misconceptions
- “England and Britain are the same.” England is one of four nations in the United Kingdom; Great Britain also includes Scotland and Wales.
- Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 — Linda Colley, Yale University Press (1992)
- “Everyone is posh.” Period dramas show a sliver of English life; most English people live in cities and towns, many in former industrial areas.
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
- “The English are cold.” Reserved with strangers, perhaps, but warmth often comes through humour, teasing and hospitality once the ice is broken.
- Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour — Kate Fox, Hodder & Stoughton (2014)
- “English food is terrible.” The food scene has transformed, from gastropubs to some of the world’s best South Asian cooking, though the English still enjoy joking about their own cuisine.
- “England is white and Christian.” It is a multi-faith, multi-ethnic country, and more people now tick “no religion” than ever before.
- Religion, England and Wales: Census 2021 — Office for National Statistics (2022)
- Ethnic group, England and Wales: Census 2021 — Office for National Statistics (2022)
People everyone knows
Alfred the Great
King of Wessex who, after being driven into the Somerset marshes by a Viking army, won at Edington in 878 and saved the last independent English kingdom. He built fortified towns (burhs), a navy and a law code, and promoted learning in English rather than Latin. He never ruled all of England, but his heirs used Wessex to build it, and he is the only English monarch called "the Great".
- The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England — Marc Morris, Hutchinson (2021)
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
Henry VIII
The Tudor king who broke with Rome in 1534 to annul his first marriage, made himself head of the Church of England and dissolved the monasteries. His reign also brought the Laws in Wales Acts that joined Wales to England in law. Six wives, a bloated and tyrannical old age and a revolution in church and state make him the best-known, and most argued-over, of English kings.
- Henry VIII — J. J. Scarisbrick, Eyre & Spottiswoode (1968)
- Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation — Peter Marshall, Yale University Press (2017)
- Recovery, Reorientation and Reformation: Wales c.1415–1642 — Glanmor Williams, Oxford University Press (1987)
Elizabeth I
Henry VIII's daughter, who reigned from 1558 to 1603 and never married. She settled a moderate Protestant Church of England, survived Catholic plots and the Spanish Armada of 1588, and presided over the age of Shakespeare and the first English voyages to the Americas. "Gloriana" became the model of a monarch who embodied the nation, though her reign also saw harsh persecution of Catholics and brutal war in Ireland.
- The Tudors: A Very Short Introduction — John Guy, Oxford University Press (2013)
- The Defeat of the Spanish Armada — Garrett Mattingly, Jonathan Cape (1959)
- Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation — Peter Marshall, Yale University Press (2017)
William Shakespeare
The glover's son from Stratford-upon-Avon whose plays and poems shaped the English language itself; everyday phrases from "wild-goose chase" to "in my mind's eye" come from him or were first recorded in his work. His history plays, from Henry V to Richard III, did much to fix the English story in popular memory, and he remains England's greatest cultural export.
- Soul of the Age: The Life, Mind and World of William Shakespeare — Jonathan Bate, Viking (2008)
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
Winston Churchill
Prime Minister from May 1940, who refused to make peace with Hitler after the fall of France and rallied Britain with speeches that still define how many English people remember the war. Polls have repeatedly named him the greatest Briton. He is also deeply controversial: an imperialist who opposed Indian self-rule, whose government's wartime policies are blamed by many historians for worsening the 1943 Bengal famine, and who was voted out in 1945.
- Churchill: Walking with Destiny — Andrew Roberts, Allen Lane (2018)
- Their Finest Hour (speech of 18 June 1940) — Winston Churchill, International Churchill Society
- Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II — Madhusree Mukerjee, Basic Books (2010)
Aneurin "Nye" Bevan
A miner's son from Tredegar who went down the pit at thirteen, became Labour MP for Ebbw Vale and, as Minister of Health, founded the National Health Service in 1948. He modelled it partly on the Tredegar Medical Aid Society, through which local workers had paid into a fund for doctors. In Wales and England alike he is remembered as the man who made healthcare free at the point of use.
- Aneurin Bevan: A Biography — Michael Foot, MacGibbon & Kee (1962)
- The Five Giants: A Biography of the Welfare State — Nicholas Timmins, HarperCollins (2017)
- Dictionary of Welsh Biography — National Library of Wales, National Library of Wales
Margaret Thatcher
A grocer's daughter from Grantham who became Britain's first woman Prime Minister, from 1979 to 1990. She curbed the trade unions, defeated the miners' strike, privatised state industries, sold council houses to their tenants and won the Falklands War. To admirers she rescued a declining country; to many in the coalfields of the North, the Midlands and south Wales she destroyed their communities. Few modern figures still divide England, or unite Wales against her, so sharply.
- Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography — Charles Moore, Allen Lane (2019)
- Marching to the Fault Line: The 1984 Miners' Strike and the Death of Industrial Britain — Francis Beckett and David Hencke, Constable (2009)
- History on Our Side: Wales and the 1984–85 Miners' Strike — Hywel Francis, Iconau (2009)
Try it yourself
The quickest way into a culture: a song, a film, a book and a dish.
“For really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he.”
“A family with the wrong members in control – that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.”
“If the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'”
Listen
- Jerusalem William Blake's poem about "England's green and pleasant land", set to music by Hubert Parry in 1916; sung at the Last Night of the Proms, Women's Institute meetings and cricket and rugby matches, and often proposed as an English anthem.▶ Listen
- Three Lions ("Football's Coming Home") Baddiel, Skinner and the Lightning Seeds' 1996 song about thirty years of hurt since 1966; every tournament it returns, half hopeful, half ironic, which is very English.▶ Listen
Watch
- Kes Ken Loach's 1969 film of a Barnsley schoolboy and his kestrel, a beloved, unsentimental picture of working-class northern England.▶ Watch
Read
- Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen's 1813 comedy of manners, class and marriage in the Georgian gentry; endlessly adapted, and a key to the English art of saying one thing and meaning another.Find it
- Small Island Andrea Levy's 2004 novel of Jamaican migrants and white Londoners in 1948, a tender and funny portrait of the Windrush generation and the England they found.Find it
Taste
- Sunday roast, and fish and chips Roast beef or chicken with Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes and gravy, eaten at home or in a pub on Sunday; and fish and chips from the chippy, wrapped in paper and eaten at the seaside.Recipe
See & do
- The Hay Wain John Constable's 1821 painting of a Suffolk river and a farm cart, the image of rural England that many English people carry in their heads, even if they live in a city.Look it up
- The pub The public house, often centuries old, is the English living room; buying "rounds" for your group is a sacred rule, and the local pub quiz is a national institution.Look it up
Where
Homeland Diaspora Significant place
Related
Wales · Scotland · Northern Ireland · Ireland · Protestantism · France · India · Pakistan · Nigeria · United States
Sources & further reading
- Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves — Adam Hochschild, Houghton Mifflin, 2005
- Englishness: The Political Force Transforming Britain — Ailsa Henderson and Richard Wyn Jones, Oxford University Press, 2021
- Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World — Alec Ryrie, Viking, 2017
- Churchill: Walking with Destiny — Andrew Roberts, Allen Lane, 2018
- The Myth of the Blitz — Angus Calder, Jonathan Cape, 1991
- Legacies of British Slavery database — Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery, UCL, University College London
- Going to the Wars: The Experience of the British Civil Wars, 1638–1651 — Charles Carlton, Routledge, 1992
- Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography — Charles Moore, Allen Lane, 2019
- The Scots and the Union — Christopher A. Whatley, Edinburgh University Press, 2006
- Magna Carta: an introduction — Claire Breay and Julian Harrison, British Library, 2015
- The Cambridge Illustrated History of France — Colin Jones, Cambridge University Press, 1994
- Magna Carta (with a new commentary) — David Carpenter, Penguin Classics, 2015
- The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth-Century History — David Edgerton, Allen Lane, 2018
- The Game of Our Lives: The Meaning and Making of English Football — David Goldblatt, Viking, 2014
- Black and British: A Forgotten History — David Olusoga, Macmillan, 2016
- The Long Shadow: The Great War and the Twentieth Century — David Reynolds, Simon & Schuster, 2013
- Reformation: Europe's House Divided, 1490–1700 — Diarmaid MacCulloch, Allen Lane, 2003
- The Making of the English Working Class — E. P. Thompson, Victor Gollancz, 1963
- The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400–c. 1580 — Eamon Duffy, Yale University Press, 1992
- England — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- France — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Marching to the Fault Line: The 1984 Miners' Strike and the Death of Industrial Britain — Francis Beckett and David Hencke, Constable, 2009
- The Defeat of the Spanish Armada — Garrett Mattingly, Jonathan Cape, 1959
- The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius — George Orwell, Secker & Warburg, 1941
- Recovery, Reorientation and Reformation: Wales c.1415–1642 — Glanmor Williams, Oxford University Press, 1987
- Joan of Arc: A History — Helen Castor, Faber and Faber, 2014
- History on Our Side: Wales and the 1984–85 Miners' Strike — Hywel Francis, Iconau, 2009
- Henry VIII — J. J. Scarisbrick, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1968
- Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain — John Darwin, Allen Lane, 2012
- A History of Wales — John Davies, Penguin, 2007
- The Tudors: A Very Short Introduction — John Guy, Oxford University Press, 2013
- Soul of the Age: The Life, Mind and World of William Shakespeare — Jonathan Bate, Viking, 2008
- The Hundred Years War, Volume I: Trial by Battle — Jonathan Sumption, Faber and Faber, 1990
- Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour — Kate Fox, Hodder & Stoughton, 2014
- Suez: Britain's End of Empire in the Middle East — Keith Kyle, I. B. Tauris, 2003
- The Making of English National Identity — Krishan Kumar, Cambridge University Press, 2003
- Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 — Linda Colley, Yale University Press, 1992
- How the United Kingdom voted on Thursday… and why — Lord Ashcroft Polls, 2016
- Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II — Madhusree Mukerjee, Basic Books, 2010
- The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England — Marc Morris, Hutchinson, 2021
- The Norman Conquest — Marc Morris, Hutchinson, 2012
- Brexitland: Identity, Diversity and the Reshaping of British Politics — Maria Sobolewska and Robert Ford, Cambridge University Press, 2020
- Wales since 1939 — Martin Johnes, Manchester University Press, 2012
- God's Fury, England's Fire: A New History of the English Civil Wars — Michael Braddick, Allen Lane, 2008
- Aneurin Bevan: A Biography — Michael Foot, MacGibbon & Kee, 1962
- Scotland: A New History — Michael Lynch, Pimlico, 1992
- Dictionary of Welsh Biography — National Library of Wales, National Library of Wales
- The Darien Scheme — National Museums Scotland
- Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World — Niall Ferguson, Allen Lane, 2003
- The Five Giants: A Biography of the Welfare State — Nicholas Timmins, HarperCollins, 2017
- National identity, England and Wales: Census 2021 — Office for National Statistics, ONS, 2022
- Ethnic group, England and Wales: Census 2021 — Office for National Statistics, 2022
- Religion, England and Wales: Census 2021 — Office for National Statistics, 2022
- Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation — Peter Marshall, Yale University Press, 2017
- The Age of Conquest: Wales 1063–1415 — R. R. Davies, Oxford University Press, 1991
- The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective — Robert C. Allen, Cambridge University Press, 2009
- The Bard: Robert Burns, a Biography — Robert Crawford, Jonathan Cape, 2009
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane, 2014
- The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners — Seumas Milne, Verso, 1994
- Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India — Shashi Tharoor, Hurst, 2017
- 1688: The First Modern Revolution — Steve Pincus, Yale University Press, 2009
- Wales and the Britons, 350–1064 — T. M. Charles-Edwards, Oxford University Press, 2013
- The Scottish Nation 1700–2000 — T. M. Devine, Allen Lane, 1999
- Independence or Union: Scotland's Past and Scotland's Present — T. M. Devine, Allen Lane, 2016
- Scotland's Empire 1600–1815 — T. M. Devine, Allen Lane, 2003
- Results and turnout at the EU referendum — The Electoral Commission (UK), 2016
- An iconic and treasured record: The Empire Windrush passenger list — The National Archives (UK), The National Archives
- History of the Scottish Parliament — The Scottish Parliament
- Windrush Lessons Learned Review — Wendy Williams, Home Office, 2020
- Their Finest Hour (speech of 18 June 1940) — Winston Churchill, International Churchill Society