First time out

Well, you have to start somewhere - so here it is.

It occurs to me that it's worth laying before my fellow citizens a diary, by an Englishman, for English men and women.

I say Englishman because that is what I feel myself to be.

I do not feel very British (despite some Scottish ancestry), and certainly not European (despite my father’s profession of Huguenot roots), and my use of the name English does not deny that I share many things with my fellow men in countries near and far. In fact, far from it. Rather it expresses some of what binds me to my nearest neighbours and friends. It brings into sharp focus what we, my fellow Englishmen and I, share in terms of common personality and ancestry.

Incidentally our name is alleged to derive from a comment made by an early Pope at a slave market in Rome, who described a blonde, blue-eyed British slave as looking like an Angel – or Angle - from which England was arrived at via Alfred's Wessex-based Anglo-Saxons.

I am not entirely sure what we English are, other than a small beleaguered tribe surrounded by Celts and seawater, but in this diary I hope to remind myself, and others, of where we English have come from, what we have experienced, what we have achieved - and what we could yet accomplish with a little self-assurance and a following wind. We shall see how I fare - no doubt someone will tell me if I stray from this rather grand mission!