The Colours of England

Roughly one and a half billion people are currently using England's language, most of them to argue on the internet. One small, rainy country handed the entire planet its lingua franca, then filled it with Shakespeare so we'd have something worth saying. That's a decent opening move.

Where it all began

Stonehenge was already up before the pyramids finished. Romans built a wall, Saxons built kingdoms, and 1066 gave England its last successful invasion and half its vocabulary. Then, in a field at Runnymede in 1215, barons made King John sign Magna Carta, the document that started the world's longest argument about limiting power, an argument constitutions everywhere are still quoting. Add the first industrial revolution, born in English mills and mines in the 1700s, and the first railway between cities (Liverpool to Manchester, 1830), and you can fairly say the modern world was assembled here, with tea breaks.

The minds

The bench is ridiculous. Shakespeare, who invented or first recorded some 1,700 words you use, eyeball, lonely, swagger. Newton, who watched an apple and rewrote the sky in 1687. Darwin, who boarded a ship and returned with the origin of species. Ada Lovelace, who wrote the first computer algorithm in 1843, a century before computers. Alan Turing, who cracked Enigma and founded computer science. Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web in 1989 and gave it away free, you're using his gift right now. And four lads from Liverpool who, in eight years flat, changed what music could be. England's exports are mostly invisible because they became the furniture of everyone's mind.

Made in England

The City of London has been a financial capital for three centuries. The Premier League is the most-watched sports league on Earth, broadcast to virtually every country. Add aerospace engines from Rolls-Royce in Derby, the world's second-biggest music export industry, Adele, Ed Sheeran, the Stones still going, Savile Row tailoring, and an entire global publishing and theatre economy running on that language they minted. Oh, and they invented football, cricket, rugby, tennis and boxing rules, then generously let everyone else win sometimes.

Where to go

London deserves its fame: the British Museum (free), the Tate (free), the theatre (not free, worth it), and markets from Borough to Columbia Road. Then get out fast. Oxford and Cambridge for a thousand years of quads and punting. Bath, a Georgian film set built over Roman springs. York, medieval streets under a cathedral that took 250 years to build.

And the England the English keep for themselves. The Lake District, Wordsworth's mountains and Beatrix Potter's farms. The Cotswolds' honey-stone villages, go to Bibury early. Cornwall's surf coast and fishing harbours, pasty in hand. The Yorkshire Dales, dry-stone walls to the horizon and pubs with fires. St Ives for painters' light, Whitby for Dracula's abbey, and a proper Sunday roast in a village pub anywhere, which is England's true national monument.

Culture, on a plate and in the ear

Fish and chips by the sea, in paper, with vinegar, non-negotiable. A full English breakfast when the day needs courage. Curry, the adopted national dish, tikka masala was likely invented in Britain. Tea as diplomacy, biscuits as currency. Then the sound: from Elgar to punk to grime, this island reinvents pop music roughly once a decade and acts like it's no big deal. Queue properly, apologise when someone bumps into you, and discuss the weather like it's breaking news. Congratulations: you're fluent in English culture.

Every colour is someone's home. I print it the way memory keeps it: vintage-washed, distressed, made to order.

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P.S. The St George's Cross: red on white, simple on purpose, seven centuries old and quietly sure of itself. Very English, that. Find your flag.