Leading Article: A Milton Keynes among islands

OUR SENSE of history has been much appealed to in the past weeks. Potent resonances have been borrowed and jingled loudly about. Our national heroes have disappeared from the national curriculum and reappeared seemingly in the space of hours. The meaning of D-Day has been argued out against a backdrop of Dame Vera Lynn, old men and Spam. And then there has been the opening of the Channel Tunnel. A pensive time for all, but particularly for the monarch and would-be monarch of this blessed plot, this England, this teeming womb of royal kings. Perhaps some of this unease informed the Prince of Wales's slightly muddled assault on political correctness last week; there was certainly a great deal of harking to tradition and 'the British character'. Yet, more tellingly, there was also a sub-Shakespearean reference to 'these ancient islands'. We British are supposed to like and respond to this mock-mystical stuff. Churchill made much of it, as did, in an inferior vein, the late Sir Arthur Bryant.

But are these islands so ancient? The earth's land mass formed some 4,600 million years ago. There are small bits of Scotland and western Ireland which date back to this time, but nothing to compare to Africa and India. The continents began to drift apart about 200 million years ago; the valley which was to become the bed of the Channel was created by a violent convulsion 40 million years ago, but England has been separated from France by water for a mere 8,500 years. Interestingly, and possibly wishfully, the Queen chose to refer to the earlier date in her speech at the tunnel opening. The fact is that water first spilled into the Channel around 1,000 years after Jericho, the new headquarters of the PLO, was founded. Not that old, then - as islands go, a Milton Keynes rather than a Babylon. Maybe we should, at last, try looking forward.