The tensions behind the idealised image of England were just as present in Shakespeare’s own time, the TV historian Michael Wood pointed out, with the brutal shift from the old Catholic religion to a new Protestantism.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of civil rights group Liberty, brought the debate forward to the present day, calling for schoolchildren to be taught Shakespeare plays in their entirety, rather than the current fashion for extracts, in the place of the “processed cheddar of identity” taught in citizenship lessons.

The panel agreed that Shakespeare has plenty to say to those debating national identity today. When Nick Hytner staged Henry V at the National Theatre just months after the start of the Iraq war, he poignantly put the actors in battle fatigues and made King Harry deliver his rhetorical speeches before video cameras. Wood recalled that when he went to see the production, in the scene in which the king and his council invent excuses for invading France (Act I, Scene II), all eyes turned to Jack Straw, who was sitting in the audience.

Chakrabarti complained that the post-Marxist view of history popular when she was at school left out the complexity of human psychology, which a study of Shakespeare’s plays could help to restore to our reading of contemporary history.

But even Shakespeare sometimes got lazy when it comes to notions of national identity. With his comedy creations Welshman Fluellen and Scotsman Captain Macmorris in Henry V, the bard resorted to “showbiz, end of the pier xenophobia”, said Boyd.

The last word went to the Glaswegian presenter and comedian Hardeep Singh Kohli, who observed: “The Scots have no issue with our identity, because if we’re ever at a loss we define ourselves by hating the English.”