THE GUARDIAN

LEADER

This year's number one stocking-filler is going to be a slim volume published at the author's own expense. The Pocket Book of Patriotism, compiled by a City headhunter who felt his sons were not learning the right things at school, was rejected by publishers, presumably bemused by the idea that patriotism somehow depended on the jingoistic view of England and the English constructed by propagandists from the age of Shakespeare to Churchill. Try taking out the flag-waving, one suggested. Now, advertised by word of mouth and sold only on the internet, Patriotism is already reprinting and Waterstone's and Ottakar's are laying in large stocks.

As its name suggests, this is a history of kings and conquests culled from the pages of Our Island Story: the history of white men, and Queen Elizabeth I who, as the book reminds us, had the heart and stomach of a man, etc. It is a cast list of the kind of history, George Orwell once observed, which imbued generations of schoolchildren with a sense of national superiority that protected them against all external influences. Its final pages, along with God save the King (sic), Jerusalem and Rule Britannia, include the countries of the British Empire and the Imperial Territories in 1920.

Lists often sell well - look at that earlier publishing phenomenon, Schott's Miscellany. But there is something mildly worrying about the way that this monocular account of a toff's England continues to appeal so compellingly: like the National Trust's vast membership, or the UK Theme, that medley of patriotic songs that starts Radio Four's day, it suggests a country constricted by a misplaced vision of its past. It tells us that to be "English" is a kind of genetic blessing rather than a set of political, moral and legal precepts to which anyone can aspire. Despite the efforts of Sir Bernard Crick to redefine Britishness, thereby giving new life to Englishness, it seems that the curriculum of a 1950s junior school still holds sway in large parts of the country. Alternative views are vital. So the 2004 Christmas challenge: devise your own pocket book of patriotism.

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