Here's a story about two Englishmen. The first was a very famous journalist, a doyen of the liberal media. During dinner with him, and a flock of other liberal darlings from the English press, at a swanky London hotel, I sat and listened as he brayed about ‘bloody paddies’ and ‘bloody jocks’, until I decided enough was enough and told him he was a dull little bar-room bigot and would be best advised to shut his mouth before I lost my good manners and did something I’d regret. 

If his xenophobic rant had been directed at people from Pakistan, say, the rest of the table would have shouted him down. Not so when it’s the Scots, Irish or Welsh in the firing line, even for liberal darlings.

The other Englishman was a gangster of my acquaintance. He looked like he could kill you with his bare hands, talked like Del Boy and had left school aged 14, yet during my visits to his home - I was researching a film on the London underworld - he asked me endless questions about the history of Ireland, where I’m from, and the state of politics in Scotland, where I live. 

He brimmed with curiosity and showed empathy and interest in the lives and histories of Irish and Scottish people. Each time I returned, he’d tell me about the books he’d been reading and how uncomfortable he was as a proud Englishman at some of the moments in his nation’s history that he’d learned about.

There you have two poles of the English experience, when it comes to understanding the other three home nations. On one extreme, there’s ignorance and dismissal verging on the pathological; on the other........

© Herald Scotland