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England gave me a language and literature, the basis of what I am as a writer, but when I started writing more directly about my own experience, it wasn't England so much as what went before.

The air of the English is down-to-earth. They care about details; there's a tradition, but there's also a counter-culture: the younger generation versus the older generation and so on. But then that's well blended into a happy balance and crystallised into common sense.

England as a culture has endured so much more than America has as a culture, so it's given them a different perspective.

I love the English. My God, they brought us 'Benny Hill,' 'Monty Python,' 'The Office,' Neville Chamberlain.

Why on earth do we want closer connection with England? We have little in common with English people except our language. We are fast becoming an entirely different people.

We were a Western civilisation, an English speaking civilisation, both NZ and Australia, and we had all these influences coming from both Great Britain and America to us; sending us their culture in the shape and form of movies and television.

I love English, though I now call it 'Anglo- American' because we no longer speak British English due to globalization and America's economic power.

English is taking over the world. I just wrote a piece about it. And it's not by design. The United States dominates because it's the biggest market.

You only have to look at London, where almost half of all primary school children speak English as a second language, to see the challenges we now face as a country. This isn't fair to anyone: how can people build relationships with their neighbours if they can't even speak the same language?