When nationalism first became a religion, the English looked at the map, and, noticing that their island lay very high in the Northern Hemisphere, evolved the pleasing theory that the further north you live the more virtuous you become. The histories I was given when I was a little boy generally started off by explaining in the naivest way that a cold climate made people energetic while a hot one made them lazy, and hence the defeat of the Spanish Armada. This non- sense about the superior energy of the English (actually the laziest people in Europe) has been current for at least a hundred years. ’Better is it for us’, writes a Quarterly Reviewer of 1827, ’to be condemned to labour for our country’s good than to luxuriate amid olives, vines, and vices.’ ’Olives, vines, and vices’ sums up t
