A Lost Kingdom

What is `England’? And what does `Englishness’ mean? National identity is now at the forefront of a fractious public debate. While such wrangling might question the union of nation-states, it typically assumes that England, Scotland and Wales are fixed and immutable entities. Yet, as the author emphasises here, these are as much historical constructions as the continental body which English nationalists are now so eager to leave. Before `England’ there were seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, the most influential of which, for long periods – and before the rise of the more famous Wessex of Alfred – was the country in the Midlands: Mercia. Carl Phelpstead argues that that this lost realm of Penda, which vanished after the Viking raids of the ninth century, continues to inspire an alternate notion of wider belonging. It has been valued by writers and poets because of its shifting, ambiguous borders. Boundaries define in two ways: they separate; but they also help to reveal the intermingling that goes on despite them. For the author, Mercia is a challenging and powerful idea: a heartland country whose centre was found at its edge.