I took my son to Canterbury this week, to have a look at the University.
I stopped before the site of the Martyrdom of St Thomas Becket and was surprised to find out that my son knew nothing at all about Becket. He then walked past the tomb of the Black Prince, blissfully unaware of who he was.

Later, over supper, I quizzed him on other heroes of Old England that my generation learned about with their mother’s milk. He’d not heard of Hereward the Wake or King Alfred – I should point out that my son wants to read history at University.

Are we so embarrassed by our past that we dare not teach it anymore? Why does the Nazi arena of World War Two dominate British primary and secondary history?

Shouldn’t we know who we are and where we came from? No wonder we keep making the same mistakes – no one pays a blind bit of notice to what has gone before any more.

These last ten years, we convinced ourselves there could never be another recession, even though we’d only just got over the dot-com crash. The first time I heard the term sub prime loan, I knew the recession was coming – you only had to look back to the Wall Street Crash to know that sub prime loans were unsustainable. I’m sure many people with a sense of history, rode the wave and sold out at the right time, making a killing in the process – but any economist that didn’t see it coming should go back to school and learn some history – all the lessons they need are there. Forget the fancy projections – the answers are in the past.

So why don’t we want to teach our children the thrilling stories of our nation’s birth – its bitter Civil Wars, its fight for democracy, Magna Carta and the rest?

Well, I think it is because we teach the history of Britain and don’t want to mention the history of England in case we cause offence. After all, the English, when wrapped up in their Cross of St George, are all racist drunkards, aren’t they? This is patently untrue but, to be politically correct, we’ve decided not to teach half the history of this country in case it inspires or inflames the English to see themselves as a nation.

It’s okay to be Scottish or Irish or Welsh – It’s okay to wave the flags of those countries and wallow in their national cultures and histories.

If we leave our history, culture and national heroes to the nationalists, we deserve everything we get. England is a nation of mongrels built by wave upon wave of immigration. Surely, by telling the whole story, blood, guts and all, England could build a united identity, where racism has no point. We would all be English as the Welsh are Welsh and the Scots are Scots and the Irish are Irish.

Because the English are denied their history they think Britain and England are synonymous. The Rest of the British will defiantly tell you that is not true. The prizes at the Wimbledon All England tennis championships are displayed on a Union Jack. Can you imaging the Welsh or the Scots doing the same? Why would the cross of St George be seen as suspect at Wimbledon? Because we have let the the wrong people steal our history for themselves by the crime of not teaching English history.

As ever, political correctness succumbs to the law of unintended consequences. By not teaching the English who they are, they appear arrogant to the rest of the British and unwelcoming of immigrants, who are just doing what all English forefathers did before – looking for a better life.

The past is a foreign country, and it is called England.

It’s those who have never been taught, forgotten or denied their past that smashed down our old city centres and replaced them with loveless and cancerous concrete, who daily repeal our liberties and laugh in our faces – as if Magna Carta were just something out of history.