The sports commentator Dickie Davies once said: "The English were beaten only in the sense that they lost." Well, he must have known what he meant.

Yet Davies - a Welshman, no less - may have accidentally hit on the truth as he mangled his words. For to be English can be confusing.

While the Scots and the Welsh have an even clearer sense of their identity thanks to devolution, the English remain somewhat bashfully in the middle, at once confident and restrained, proud yet not wanting to make too much of a fuss about it.

There are plenty among us who will not hesitate to declare their Englishness. Yet how do such displays of drum-banging confidence square with the fact that so few English people bother to remember their patron saint?

Tomorrow is St George's Day, yet a new survey reveals that more English people celebrate St Patrick's Day than that belonging to their own St George. Are we really so uncertain of who we are?

Such matters can be complicated. After all, should we be proud to be English or take comfort from being British? Then again, does a Yorkshire man or woman owe greater allegiance to their county or their country? And we haven't even mentioned Europe. Some might wish we kept matters that way, but Europe plays a part in the way we live; might it one day help to define who we are?

So many questions. Perhaps we should call on Shakespeare, whose birthday also falls tomorrow on - yes, that's it - St George's Day. Will famously spoke of "...this sceptered isle/ This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars/ This other Eden...". Yes, he is referring to our England.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.