It's Winder's fault, not Jerome's, but that's the trouble with the book - it is a great read but it's let down by some basic strange history. The whole Celt section for a start is rather suspect.

FAO Fiona Duncan

On the subject of confusing 'England' with 'Britain', I (charitably?) assume that either Robert Winder or Jerome Taylor has fallen into the trap of writing 'Britain' when he means 'England' NOT because of some anti-Scot agenda, but because the area that we now know as 'England' is almost exactly the area that the Romans knew as 'Britannia'.

Still, I agree that it is a shame that it crept in to an article written to show the counter-factuality of the concept of some 'pure blooded' 'race' called 'the English'.

This is pure fiction. For an introduction to a scientifically based pre-history of Britain, read
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7817

Winder has his own reasons for suggesting that the British are already an ethnic soup, however, the exact opposite is the case.

"The Roman armies that invaded Britain brought some of the first non-white faces to our shores. Their armies may have been controlled by Rome but were made up of significant numbers of North Africans and people from what is now the Middle East."

Significant numbers? Ridiculous. Yes, here and there, we would see Berber, Grecian, and other Northern Africans, and some Semites. But they would serve Rome overwhelmingly in their own lands, not in Britain.

Leroy, The Netherlands

The first immigrant arrived 25,000 years ago? Who classed him as an immigrant then?He was surely a settler,an original inhabitant.The Beaker people arrived in the "UK".My God ,the UK is older than I thought.What an idiotic book and reviewer.The lastest DNA evidence points to the fact that the vast majority of the English are descended from the first 3,00 inhabitants of this island.Science is catching up with the Lefty multiculturists who re-write history to push the social engineering politics that are failing and fragmenting the nation.

Why is it that genuine concerns on immigration is classed as hysteria....immigration is the number one concern of many English people it is concern NOT hysteria. How these pro immigrationists like to exagerate either that or call you a racist for mentioning the negative effects of immigration.

The British of today are a multi racial multi cultural mongral people (not a nation) with no identity. British is a mixture of many nationalities who follow different cultures etc....diverse, divided and rapidly failing to integrate.

The English however are an identifiable nationality, members of the European racial group, We are only a mongral nation when we allow the PC liberals to erode our nation in the way they have done with British identity.
If you dont look it, talk it (in a recogniseable English accent) and think it... then you are not English.

This is a pretty awful article. I doubt if the books any better from what has been suggested.

On the other hand this link

This is pure fiction. For an introduction to a scientifically based pre-history of Britain, read
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7817

refers to a highly contentious and generally considered discredited theory by Oppenheimer. The historical linguistics in the book is considered pseudo-junk; how good the genetics are is debateable. Here are a couple of attacks on it.
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004346.html
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004296.html
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004276.html

There is debate as to how much of the language change in England from Celtic to Germanic was the result of demographic replacement, and how much the result of language replacement. Colin Renfrew argues, somewhat convincingly, for the latter, and the genetic evidence seems to agree, though there are considerable disagreements as to the methodology of the latter.

The matter is of academic interest for the UK but is of paramount political importance in the Indian sub-continent.

On reading "a few of the more unusual facts" above, I was reminded about those funny media reports on the mixed up views of history that school kids get, because they lack a chronology; D-Day was in 1066 (and all that).

I think I get the point of the book and this article.

There were North Africans in the Roman armies guarding Hadrians Wall 1900 years ago.

Therefore any amount of (say) African immigration now is acceptable. And anyone who disagrees is a racist.

The Roman Army was multiracial but monocultural, although soldiers were allowed to worship their particular gods. Hence the shrines to Middle Eastern deities like Mithras. The Romans found more security by having their foreign mercenaries serve a long way from their homelands.

But the corollary - that because there were British soldiers on the Mesopotamian frontiers 1800 years back, therefore the British Army in Iraq is acceptable now - that might prove too much for you.

Logan,

I would like to be able to offer you the rejoinder of an opus titled, "They never asked". Sadly, the liberal world demonises expressions of English ethnic interests as "racist", "Nazi", "fascist" etc. "British" Sub-Safs like you, however, are invited to follow your instincts freely.

The difference, of course, is the real racism - which is anti-English.

Like Phillip Legrand, Robert Winder is merely feeding reassurance to liberals anxious that replacing Europe's native peoples with Bantus, Sub-cons, Arabs, Han Chinese and the rest isn't producing La-La's longed-for paradise.

Why should it?

Fundamentally, race-replacement is genocide, so it isn't unnatural for liberals to feel a tad uncomfortable about supporting it so fervently. But Winder understands them. In reality he is commending aggressivity on the Englishman's living space. So he's peddling anti-English racism. But he does it safe in the knowledge that, according to liberal dictate, no such animal exists.

Hypocrisy, thy name is liberal.

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