Last summer I took a backpacking coach tour around Ireland. On the first morning, the Irish guide broke the ice by instructing us to shout out when he named the country we were from. After Italy, France, Spain, Australia and America eventually came England; my naïve holiday excitement manifested itself in a loud cheer from the back of the bus.

‘It’s not something I would be cheering about’, was the gruff reply my enthusiasm received.

For the rest of the holiday, I found myself playing down my nationality, instead promoting my Irish, Scottish and even distant French heritage. I was almost apologising for my very existence. I came home feeling anything but proud to be English.

That incident, and the demoralising feelings that accompanied it, has strengthened my belief that Englishness isn’t deemed to be something worthy of celebration.

The creation of the Scottish Executive and the Welsh Assembly has done much to boost national pride in these parts of the union. Northern Irish identity is continually debated and St Patrick’s Day brings global celebrations of all things Irish.

When compared with the strong Celtic traditions of the rest of Britain our lack of national pride puts us at a disadvantage. The government relies on support from north and west of the borders and despite recent debate about Scots MPs being able to influence English policy decisions (the West Lothian Question), it continues to endorse Britishness rather than Englishness in order to secure this support. This promotes a feeling of awkwardness amongst the English about their identity.

Admittedly, the English have a chequered history, but should the sins of their ancestors be visited on today’s generation? I was not personally responsible for the Potato Famine; indeed, there’s every chance my Irish ancestors suffered during it. But my English accent places some blame with me. A preoccupation with the past is preventing admiration for all that is English in the present day.

The Welsh keep their culture alive by teaching their children Cymric. The Scots go one step further, making provision in their school curriculum for the teaching of ‘The Culture of Scotland’. A discussion paper on The Culture of Scotland produced in 1999 by the Scottish Consultative Council on the Curriculum recommends that children should ‘consider issues of identity and community’ and ‘the relationship between a sense of belonging and ‘Scottishness’. The paper reports that ‘a meaningful engagement between individuals and the culture of the society around them’ will bring benefit to both.

England has no equivalent because our Citizenship curriculum focuses on the study of British society as a whole rather than focusing on England in particular.

The DFES says that ‘Pupils have the opportunity to explore the unique qualities that are part of the shared identities of the countries of the United Kingdom. Through Citizenship pupils are ‘taught about the origins and the implications of the diverse national, regional religious and ethnic identities in the United Kingdom and the need for mutual respect and understanding’. Our children lose out on specific teaching about the culture of England, a potentially rich and rewarding experience. And English culture is apparently the same as British culture.

Confusion between English and British culture is one of the issues that prevents the celebration of English culture: if we can’t even define it, we can’t promote it. Dr Nick Groom, a Reader in English Literature at the University of Bristol, is interested in how Englishness arises as an identity. He says that an English cultural identity has been lost in and confused with Britishness since the rise of the Empire. Dr Groom cites the raising of the Union Jack to celebrate England’s victory in the 1966 World Cup as an example of this. Indeed the St George flag has been hijacked by the far right and is now a symbol of national embarrassment rather than national pride because of the racist connotations attached to it.

Luckily English pride is not yet completely dead; there is an enthusiasm bubbling under the surface that spectacularly revealed itself when England won the Rugby World Cup. English Folk music, long overshadowed by Irish and Scottish traditional music, is being resurrected by innovative young musicians like Jim Moray. On her show on BBC Radio Shropshire, Genevieve Tudor commented that the wider audience Jim’s music is attracting..

‘…would help us celebrate some of the wonderful traditions we have here. We needn’t be embarrassed by our culture. It’s really very good indeed’.

And so it seems there is support for the celebration of English culture. Dr Groom believes our mixed backgrounds and the cultural diversity that seems to make Englishness hard to define is actually one of our best features. England has always had a very mixed society - the Anglo-Saxons themselves were a crossbreed! Like almost every other citizen of England I have a mixed heritage that I am proud of (especially when the Guinness is flowing on St Patrick’s Day) but I am an English citizen and I want to be proud of that too.

Dr Groom believes the history we are made to feel so ashamed of should be studied in schools to give our children a sense of community and belonging.

‘We should not be apologising for our history,’ he says. ‘We should be learning from it to ensure the mistakes of the past are not repeated.’ He thinks that if we debate and finally define our national identity we will all feel a lot more comfortable with it.

So to the government that brought us ‘Cool Britannia’: when the Euro 2004 euphoria has died down, let's not stop celebrating being English!