Special: England’s divided soul – Nick Cohen talks to JAMES HAWES

<p><strong>What does Englishness even mean</strong> in a land so splintered by class, geography, language and even post-colonial neuroses that it barely understands itself? And how far back would you draw the North-South divide? To 1066? Or maybe to the Jurassic period? <strong>James Hawes</strong>, novelist and author of the riotously readable <a href="https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/James-Hawes/The-Shortest-History-of-England/25091155" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Shortest History Of England</em></a>, talks to The Observer’s <strong>Nick Cohen</strong> about England’s murky past and murkier future in a new occasional series of one-to-one conversations.</p><ul><li><em>“The Norman Conquests were a </em><strong><em>long, grinding and demeaning process for the English</em></strong><em>. It was the slow annihilation of a culture.”</em></li><li><em>“England hasn’t existed as a separate state since 1707… Instead you had a polyglot empire of different nations.”</em></li><li><em>“When English people stand up and say ‘We’ve lost our Empire’, well </em><strong><em>you never had one in the first place</em></strong><em>, mate.”</em></li><li><em>“We were able to beat the French because we’d created this extraordinary combination of aristocrats and businessmen that we call ‘gentlemen’.”&nbsp;</em></li><li><em>“Even now, we automatically fall back into </em><strong><em>Northern gits and Southern bastards</em></strong><em>. This stuff runs deep.”</em></li><li><em>“It’s been so long since the English have had to look at the problems of being English that I can’t see it ending peacefully.”</em></li></ul><p><em>Presented by Nick Cohen. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofrenijevic. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. </em><strong><em>THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production.</em></strong></p> &#10;&nbsp;<br /><hr><p style='color: grey; font - size: 0.75em; '>See <a style='color: grey; ' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/priv