On St George's Day, I'm proud to be a young Englishman - no matter what the establishment trying to destroy our identity says: CHARLIE DOWNES By CHARLIE DOWNES Published: 07:41 EDT, 23 April 2025 | Updated: 07:49 EDT, 23 April 2025 e-mail View comments Ever since I was a boy, I have had the privilege of being immersed in English culture. Whether they realised it or not, my parents gave me the most English childhood imaginable. I grew up in rural Kent and went to a Church of England primary school founded centuries before I was born.
Next to it stands a Saxon church more than a thousand years old. Weekends were spent exploring castles, gardens and stately homes; watching Shakespeare at a small local theatre; and holidaying in Cornwall and Sussex, where we enjoyed long walks through fields and ancient woods, picnics on the beach, roast dinners in pubs older than the United States, and tea and scones in quaint tearooms. On the way home, we listened to The Beatles and Oasis.
In the evening we watched Fawlty Towers and Alan Partridge, and before bed my father read me The Wind In The Willows and The Lord Of The Rings. And when it came to manners, my parents were positively Victorian. I could not have asked for a better upbringing – and today, on St George’s Day, I hope that I can one day give my own children the gift of an English childhood.
Until my late teens, I didn’t think there was anything particularly remarkable about any of this. It was all I had ever known – it was.
