This little world, this precious stone

WHAT is Englishness, and in what does it consist? Some will see it in the line of the Malvern hills, or hear it in the patter of rain on oak leaves. Some will trace it in a self-effacing gesture, an embarrassed laugh, or the silence of travellers on the London Underground. Others will find it in Charles Dickens's descriptions, in William Blake's engravings or in the rude little figures in the margins of the Luttrell Psalter. Peter Ackroyd finds it here, there and everywhere.