Volume 47, Number 20 · December 21, 2000
The Luck of the English
By Eamon Duffy
A History of Britain: At the Edge of the World? 3000BC-AD1603
by Simon Schama
Talk Miramax/Hyperion, 415 pp., $40.00
Great Britain is a political entity consisting of (at least) four nations spread through an archipelago of two major and many smaller islands off the northwestern coast of Europe. Legislatively united in the English parliament at Westminster by Acts of Union in 1707 (Scotland) and 1800 (Ireland), its flag, the 'Union Jack,' is an amalgam of the superimposed crosses of Saint George, Saint Andrew, and Saint Patrick, patron saints of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Wales, despite having made a better job of preserving its own national language than Scotland or Ireland, was subjugated earlier than either, and is not represented on the Union flag.
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