Introduction to Lovesongs to the Auld Enemy

How this book of essays came about was the idea of casting light on Scotland and England. Also a sense that England was at a turning point and there was a desire to – perhaps cheekily – advise our neighbour as to what a search for identity might be like.

I excluded London from the process because it made things too easy. London seemed to me to be too British, too international a city. That it is so is, I think, a result of English tolerance, English dynamism and English power. But, in the end I think we would have ended up with eight essays about fun things about London. I wanted to know about England.

It’s been a fascinating process. The first was the interesting resistance – still – to liking something about England. It seemed as though English people, artists, were likeable but the minute it came to be prevalent enough to generalize as ‘English’ it seemed negative.

Every essay has a moment of ‘this other England.’ A sense that the official, overweening story doesn’t reflect the whole truth. One must place this in context. The little guy is always suspicious of the big guy. When you’ve been patronized as much as we have a wee bit of chippiness is unsurprising.

There was also a complicated attitude to Scottishness emergent from Alan Wilkins, an Anglo living in Scotland to Linda Maclean, a Scot living in England. Raja Shehadeh is neither Scottish nor English but, resident in Scotland for part of the year, he perceives both identities from an interesting angle.

The second thing was that everyone ended up liking things which – to the English – will seem to be clichés of themselves. Eccentricity, rolling hills, stiff upper lip, a sense of fairness and outrage at injustice, unassuming achievement in many fields, biting satire.

I was surprised that none of us came up with English multiculturalism, or English club music. Those are the sorts of issues I would expect a group of English writers to explore. But then – maybe we associate those with British rather than English culture. Maybe – even from a distance

– there is some kind of separation between English and British. I wondered how I would feel if a bunch of Belgians wrote about Scotland and said they liked whisky and the highlands and ceilidhs.

I don’t know whether English people would prefer that we rebranded them and loved English cuisine as represented by Heston Blumenthal rather than that represented by the English Breakfast. Or that we like English urban landscapes rather than rolling hills.

But – perhaps this is a lesson – the generalizations which brand you usually contain some truth and perhaps, rather than try to escape them, we should embrace and celebrate them.

In the end, it seems to me that national identity is something we can put on or take off like a costume. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable. Sometimes we feel proud of it. But it’s nice to have one.

What does it say about relations between the two countries? It seemed to me that it was a fraught sort of relationship. Less a marriage than a relationship of siblings. … It’s difficult to like your overweening Elder Sister who’s always telling you what to do. But – sometimes – when you get them on their own. Over a pint… there is this other England.

David Greig 2007