When you're on this major English estate, breathing in the English air, and it's untouched, you can feel its presence. It's a whole different feel. It really felt like we were there living it. It didn't feel modern, ever.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I'm English and love England. Whenever I'm there, I'm always seeing the present but feeling its past.
I never felt totally, 100%, patriotically English... I'd seen a lot of the world by an early age - sort of spent a lot of time traveling around Lebanon and I'd seen Babylon, and Damascus, and all sorts of places in the Middle East by the time I was ten. Then we'd return to Ruslip in West London... Done a fair bit of traveling really.
Everyone thinks England and America are the same, as we have the same language, but I felt like an alien as an English person living in America.
I feel very English in a suit. There's something about being in a suit abroad, particularly in America, that feels empowering.
Even modern English people are imperious, superior, ridden by class. All of the hypocrisy and the difficulties that are endemic in being British also make it an incredibly fertile place culturally. A brilliant place to live. Sad but true.
The fact is that I loved being in England.
As I absorbed life here and understood it better, I just completely fell in love with England.
As to London we must console ourselves with the thought that if life outside is less poetic than it was in the days of old, inwardly its poetry is much deeper.
Although I've lived in England for more than twenty years, I still have a foreigner's passion for all the details of English history and rural life.
I've always felt very English.