How God Made the English

In a new three-part series for BBC Two, “How God Made The English”, Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch explores how English identity has slowly been shaped by the interplay of Church and State over the last 1,400 years. “Who are the English?” is a topical question, discussed time and time again by columnists, presenters, journalists, novelists, poets and every single Prime Minister in the last two decades. The conventional wisdom is that there is a neat, static and ageless set of characteristics that define the English. Throughout the series, Professor MacCulloch will explore this notion of a timeless “Englishness” and will argue that, in fact, English identity has changed over time, and that these changes are a result, not of the usual suspects of politics, wars and economics, but a product of religion