The United Kingdom gave me The Beatles, The Kinks, and The Rolling Stones among others, and I was hooked on All Things England before I was a teen and remain so to this day.
I was still an Anglophile after being forced to read the collected works of William Shakespeare in countless high school English Literature classes and might have become an Anglo-phobe were it not for Dr. Richard Arthur George ('my mother named me for three kings' little did she know) who organized a field trip to New Hope, Pennsylvania, for their annual Shakespeare Festival where I had the opportunity to see the plays as Shakespeare had intended actually performed and was intoxicated by the intricacy and brilliance.
The United Kingdom, on which the sun never sets, is two weeks and two days from crashing out of the European Economic Union (we call it the Common Market, but aren't we all?) without an actual formalized agreement but that's not what concerns me today when pondering the fate of 'this royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.'
No. Instead I'm wondering how a nation of shopkeepers who stood alone after Dunkirk and withstood the Blitz without flinching somehow decided that World Chase Tag is what Vera Lynn might have wanted while selecting, twice, Boris Johnson to be their gladiator in the arena. I can't help but worry just how stale the bread at the circus will become before the birds get it.
-bill kenny
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