Notes From Albion

hands across the sea

ALBION: ’TIS THE OLD CELTIC name for Great Britain, a name that predates history. To me it speaks of the timelessness of Britain—a reminder of the ages and influences that have created all we think of as Britain’s heritage: its literature and language, art and architecture, political history and popular culture, institutions and icons.

Whatever our ethnic background, as Americans we are all Albion’s seed.

When I took the editor’s desk at British Heritage, I chose the name to title my editorial column, however, inspired by a contemporary American book, Albion’s Seed. In this monumental social history, David Hackett Fischer traces our American culture back to the folkways of the four distinct colonial emigrations into this country from Britain: the Puritan migration from East Anglia to New England, the cavalier establishment of Virginia out of England’s South and West Country, the Quaker settlement of the Delaware Valley originating in the north midlands and Wales and, finally, the invasion of Borderers, Scots and Ulstermen into Appalachia and the wilderness beyond the Atlantic seaboard.
We are all Albion’s seed. Whatever our ethnic background as Americans (and only 20 percent of us now share Britain by blood), our cultural roots derive far more from Britain than from all other bits of the proverbial American melting pot.
After several issues as a commuting editor, I just relocated from New Hampshire to Virginia to become the British Heritage editor-in-residence at Primedia’s History Group offices in Leesburg, in the beautiful hunt country of Loudoun County—a Yankee yeoman plunked into the heartland of the Virginia cavaliers. Here as in New England, our British roots may be closer to the surface than in “newer” parts of the United States, but whether we live in Boston or Bakersfield, Seattle or Sarasota, Green Bay or Galveston, we share in common a British heritage that is far more significant than it is popular in our contemporary society to acknowledge.
Multitudes of British expatriates in Canada and the States, Lord love ’em, look to BH to remind them of home, but British Heritage is, after all, an American magazine. For most of our astute North American readers, this venerable magazine is the vehicle to illuminate our connection to what will always be the motherland of our way of life, our language and our own culture.
Do enjoy this issue, as we travel from the cliffs of Lyme Regis to the dark waters of Loch Ness, and back in time more than a millennium. And, may I take this opportunity as well to remind you that you can share your enthusiasm for our British heritage with others. A subscription to British Heritage always makes a lovely and creative gift!