I have been working on the final proofs of my forthcoming book, Who Are We Now? Stories of Modern England (Picador). When I started thinking about the book parliament was deadlocked over Brexit, and I wanted to know whether we as Britons, riven and polarised as we were, still shared some underlying common experience, something that could hold us together in all our difference, in spite of our differences. Was it appropriate even to speak of Britain as a single, united country in an era of rising English and Scottish nationalism? The pandemic made that question seem even more relevant.
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