St George, by Donatello, c.1415

Last year I played a song in honour of England’s patron saint, St George, who, as this Wikipedia piece shows, England shares with a number of other countries. But he’s the only one we have and 23 April is his day here. It is also, coincidentally, both the birth and death date of the finest playwright the world has ever known – Bill the Bard (1564 to 1616). The day isn’t marked as an official holiday here – we have relatively few of those – but it is still a part of English history that I grew up learning about in school. The day has declined in importance over the centuries, but is still marked in many English towns and cities, albeit with celebrations which are fairly understated – in the true tradition of our country!

And for those many Americans who find difficulty in understanding our countries, England, along with Scotland and Wales, is part of Great Britain, and when you add in Northern Ireland you get the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which is usually abbreviated to ‘the UK.’ So when your ‘esteemed’ president speaks of ‘England’ he is usually referring to the UK as a whole, but since when did accuracy and facts ever bother him? The other three countries in the UK all have their own patron saints, but today I am playing some songs about England, as this is our day. And if you know the legend of St George slaying the dragon you may be pleased to hear that I’m not going with any songs about dragons, so Puff is out!

I’m concentrating on songs that say something about being English, whatever that might mean, and this is a good starting point:

A New England was written by Billy Bragg, and after Kirsty MacColl saw him perform it in concert she decided that she wanted to record the song too. Billy’s original version had only two verses, and as Kirsty  thought it was too short Billy wrote a further verse for her. The line in the chorus “I’m just looking for another girl” became a question: “Are you looking for another girl?” Since Kirsty’s untimely death, Billy has included the additional verse in performances of the song as a tribute. Kirsty recalled to Record Mirror in 1985, “It was hell making the video, I was seven months pregnant and it was shot out in the freezing cold.” Did you spot the way she motioned at her stomach as she sang the line “I put you on a pedestal and you put me on the pill”?

Growing up I was introduced to the traditional England as being a land of country gardens and delicacy, so I thought a couple of songs about that might be suitable for today. Here’s the first, audio-only, I’m afraid:

The Kinks released Village Green in November 1968 as a track on their album The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society. Ray Davies composed the song in August 1966 after an experience at a pub in Devon, a rural part of England. It laments the decline of a fictional English community’s traditional village green. Retrospective commentators place the song in the tradition of English pastoral poetry, particularly its themes of rural living and a declining English culture. The fact that the song wasn’t released for two more years shows how undecided Ray was about the message, but it became a focal point of that album, and was intended to be the title track until another was chosen instead.

I just have to play you that song now, don’t I! One of my favourites, Kate Rusby, recorded a cover version of it for her Awkward Annie album, and in seeking out a video I came across this. It is a lovely version, perfectly mimed to Kate’s recording, which was made for a local church show with amateur performers. I think this is utterly charming:

None of the performers is credited on the video, but they all played their roles well. And I love the way they interspersed some clips of Joan Hickson as Miss Marple – still the best in that role, in my view – to further enhance the English-ness of it all.

Another song which takes that theme comes from what might seem an unlikely source:

Pink Floyd released Grantchester Meadows in November 1969 on Ummagumma, which was a double album: one live record and one studio one. This was on the studio album and originally ran to more than seven minutes: the video I am playing is a later, shortened version, which adds David Gilmour and Richard Wright to Roger Waters, who wrote the song and performed it solo for the original recording. This was done especially for the BBC to broadcast. It evokes a summer’s day in Grantchester, a small village close to Cambridge. David Gilmour lived in that area at that time, and Grantchester’s famous former residents also include the Edwardian poet Rupert Brooke, who moved there and subsequently wrote a poem of homesickness entitled The Old Vicarage, Grantchester.

I’m closing with a couple of songs which take less of an idyllic approach to being English, and ask a few questions about what it now means. Starting with this one, for which someone has kindly made a lyric video:

English Civil War was a track on The Clash’s second album, Give ‘Em Enough Rope, which was released in November 1978, and then became a single in February 1979. As I’m sure you noticed, the song is derived from an American Civil War song, When Johnny Comes Marching Home, written by Irish-born Massachusetts Unionist Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore. It was popular among both sides of the conflict. Having learnt the song at school, Joe Strummer suggested that the band should update it. Those on the left wing saw the rise during the mid-1970s of far-right groups such as the National Front as alarming and dangerous omens for Britain’s future. The song is about this state of politics in the country and warns against all things uniformed and sinister. Strummer said, echoing the song’s lyrics, in an interview to the music newspaper Record Mirror:

‘War is just around the corner. Johnny hasn’t got far to march. That’s why he is coming by bus or underground.’

Nearly fifty years on, we are in a similar situation. For me, even the remotest possibility of Farage’s Reform Party being in government is a terrifying thought, and I just hope that their lead in opinion polls has died away before the next general election, when people might have had time to come to their senses. But the US has done it twice, and are our voting masses any more intelligent than theirs? I can but hope.

I’m closing today with the song I played last year. As I said then, it has taken one of my favourite folk rock bands to come up with an anthem for our times, which I think speaks volumes for what is both right and wrong about our country. This is Merry Hell, with Come On, England:

And again as I said last year, England’s traditional values need to be respected and preserved, and the worse aspects of society need to be quietened. I can’t think of a better way of saying that other than with this song. The populists may try to lay claim to being the rightful proponents of those traditions, but they are anything but that. And they probably don’t know that St George was born in what is nowadays part of Eastern Turkey, which I find amusing: he’s one of those immigrants they hate so much! Countries around the world have fallen victim to populist movements over the past decade or two, but it was encouraging to see Hungary recently rejecting their dictator: today in England it is a day to reflect on that and stand up for our real values.