Started work on my new book. Title: A Patriot’s History of Britain. The idea of that is to lure and mislead Rightists into buying or borrowing it, after which they’ll either realise it’s not for them, and throw it away angrily; or stay with it to become enlightened. But it’s not just intended to deceive. One of the book’s underlying messages will be that ‘patriotism’ can be selective, and yet still give one the warm, proud feeling that a more uncritical kind apparently does. And it will carry the lesson that the highest form of patriotism is the one that makes you want to make your country better; and that to do that you need a realistic grasp of how it is presently, and was in the past.
It will be my answer to all this ‘flag’ rubbish. The book will be brief (200+ pages), and hopefully popular. (I can carry my learning lightly when I try.) I’ve sent a proposal to Bloomsbury, who served me pretty well with my last book. Let’s see what comes of it.
I thought this might make a good Introductory quote:
Porter’s Pensées 
I hope it addresses the issue of non-patriotism or the total lack of patriotic feeling felt by some people, expressed for example by always supporting the side England is playing against in every sport, and hoping another Brit does not win the Tour de France. Perhaps in Jonson’s new flag-waving utopia, patriotism will be compulsory, and its extent tested regularly by attaching electrodes to measure reaction to patriotic symbols and pictures, with fines attached. That other Johnson spoke of ‘ the last refuge of the scoundrel,’ but this lot of scoundrels want to make patriotism part of their culture war, to shift attention from inequality, poverty and Scots independence, and the dire consequence of leaving the truly patriotic ideal of European unity.
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If you are trying to draw in the patriots on the right, wouldn’t it be better to go for ‘Great Britain’ in the title, in preference to the down-sized and humbler ‘Britain’? Good luck with the project, Bernard.
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There might be chance in your new book to discuss the bizarre reversal of meaning in the old phrase Little Englander, how it applied in the late nineteenth century to Manchester free trade Liberals opposed to expansion of the Empire, but by the early twenty-first century had become a pejorative applied to nativist Brexiteers with their fantasy of Global Britain. From William Gladstone and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman to Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab. SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI.
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