The answer doesn't usually include Nancy Cunard's assault on Anglo-British whiteness; J.B. Priestley's democratic populism; Who guitarist Pete Townshend's modernist rebellion; Vivienne Westwood's anti-fashion; David Dabydeen's blackening of the literary and visual canon; or Mark Wallinger's detournement of English oil painting.

Kevin Davey, drawing on the work of Gramsci and Julia Kristeva, argues that any analysis of Englishness should aknowledge these figures, and goes on to pose searching questions about New Labour's vision of the nation.