Since the time, as the song says, When Britain first at

heaven s command arose from out the azure main," she

has produced more than her fair share of heroes. Possibly

the most honored is Admiral Horatio Nelson, who saved his

country from Napoleon s navy. But of all the memorials to

the Battle of Trafalgar, the most typically British are

unmarked and unnoticed. Lord Nelson s second-in-

command that daywas Vice-Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood

who, unlike the hero of the day, lived to enjoy a long

retirement. His greatest pleasures during those years were

long walks in the country, and he never walked anywhere

without a pocketful of aeoms, which he dropped along the

wayto replace the oak trees had been felled to build the

British fleeL

The image of a retired admiral named Cuthbert planting

trees along public footpaths is, for many of us, the picture

of England itself. But it is only a snapshot of the culture that

gave us William Shakespeare and Peter Rabbit, Edward

Elgar and the Beatles, the Royal Family and the House of

Commons. It s a culture so distinct that even Englishmen

themselves often forget that they aren t a pure breed, but

the product of a melting pot. During the years of Roman

occupation, which lasted almost five centuries, camp-

followers from every comer of the world addeql their genes

to a mix that also includes the blood of Saxons and Celts,

Normans and Danes. In spite of this, as Ogden Nash

pointed out, To be an Englishman is to belong to the most

exclusive club there is."

The fact that they live on an island has something to do

with it. The English Channel may not seem like much of a

barrier; people have been swimming across it for years. But

it s barrier enough to have kept England s neighbors in their

place for more than nine-hundred years, more than enough

time for the English to have developed a sense of, for lack