Connect Eddie Holt 'You could argue," wrote Andrew Anthony in Wednesday's Guardian, "that the defining characteristic of being English is to be in a state of confusion about what it means to be English.
The modern English identity, we might conclude, is an identity crisis." Perhaps this is so, yet England and its media continue to lionise particular forms of Englishness.
David Beckham, Jonny Wilkinson and Tim Henman are (or have been until very recently) English sports stars. This trio of white, male, twentysomethings, all born in the 1970s, represent not only relative sporting success - in Henman's case, very relative - but an image of young Englishmen that continues to deny all notions of an identity crisis.
There is, of course, class stratification in their various appeals. Football-playing Beckham is aimed primarily at working-class people. Then again, his sport is so global that in international competitions he can transcend his core appeal. In kicking the winning drop-goal in rugby union's world cup final, Wilkinson too transcended his core appeal to the middle-class.
Were Henman ever to win Wimbledon (if pigs could fly!) he too could expect to transcend, albeit briefly, his ultra middle-class fan base. Success expands appeal and Henman, despite the media, will never be a sufficiently successful tennis player to enjoy the public adulation generated by Beckham's free-kick goal against Greece in 2001 or Wilkinson's winner against Australia last year.
Still, in matters of English self-definition and identity, Henman can be incorporated as a gallant, if perennial loser. Beckham appears to be on the slide and the injured Wilkinson has hardly been heard of since his heroics. It may be unfair to describe the trio as 'pretty boys' - all three are hardy enough for top class sport - but beside Wayne Rooney, they look positively effete.
Certainly, if Rooney is to fulfill even a quarter of the absurd hype and predictions written and broadcast about him, he will eclipse Henman. If he reaches half of his media-projected potential, he will, in sporting terms, almost certainly eclipse all three. But he lacks the male-model appeal of the 1970s boys and his surname bespeaks an ambiguous foreignness.
He is English, of course, but then so too are Sol Campbell, Lindford Christie and Ashley Cole. Little wonder that the modern English identity can be considered an identity crisis. The country is already too multi-cultural for set notions of what represents Englishness. Ironically, the appeal of Beckham, Wilkinson and Henman is also a form of retro-appeal.
They represent, as well as a living England, an older, notional, timeless England. Indeed, in the past - until about a decade ago - they would have been British icons and referred to as such by their country's media. But what is their country? Is it England, Britain, Great Britain or even, as Irish dee-jays always carelessly refer to the bigger island to our east, the UK? The first obvious manifestation of English, as distinct from British, nationalism occurred at the Euro 96 football championships held in England. Flags displaying the red St. George's cross on a white background hugely outnumbered red, white and blue Union flags. Thirty years earlier when England won football's World Cup, Union Jacks monopolised flag-waving.
There remains confusion, of course, and England (or Ingerland) fans at football matches always sing Rule Brittania. What the Scots and the Welsh think of this could be fascinating. (Northern Ireland unionists, though members of the UK and supportive of Britain are neither part of Britain or even, as Scotland is, Great Britain. 'Rule United Kingdomia' rather grates.) There are other aspects which add to the English sense of an identity crisis. When abroad, the English are routinely considered either as drunken and loutish or snobbish and insular. Not all English people display such characteristics, of course.
Indeed there's a growing middle group deeply embarrassed by such behaviour and depictions.
Nonetheless enough English people conform to the loutish or snobbish depictions to cast these traits as defining. It's difficult not to conclude that, within England, a form of brutalisation, similar to that exported to the colonies of empire, has left an unseemingly large lumpen mass and a deluded class clinging to notions of innate superiority.
Under such circumstances, it's not surprising that 'the modern English identity is an identity crisis'. With a population four times greater than the rest of the United Kingdom, England is too dominant within that entity. Notions of innate superiority were more easily maintained within such a set-up, especially when trickle-down superiority could be used to appease other 'British' peoples.
Increasingly divested however, of its protective 'British' shell and finding that 'Johnny Foreigner' is not always a mug, England is having to readjust to new realities. The globalising world is changing identities. The left suspects international capital but yearns for a borderless world; the right wants the global market but remains keen on older identities.
But time is catching up on 'timeless' England. Its FA Cup Final, Epsom Derby and boat race - as well as its monarchy - are not nearly as central to global culture as they once were. Like Tim Henman (maybe Beckham and Wilkinson too!) they belong to yesteryear.