This is the patriot's song book, which includes such rollicking word-smiths as Hilaire Belloc, G K Chesterton, Rudyard Kipling and the lyrics of Gilbert and Sullivan. England, as every fan of Flanders and Swan will know, hasn't really got a national song. This collection more than fills the gap. Despite the worldwide spread of the English language in the wake of the Empire, the poets of England were always more interested in personal freedom than political conformity. Those rallying cries from the pens of Blake, Byron and Brook are as relevant as ever. Armed with the clarion calls of Milton and Shakespeare, "England" still calls upon us to do our duty: to cleanse our land of a media monoculture linked by a spreading cancer of motorways, hypermarkets and a rootless, heartless international capitalism that rots the spirit.
