Why Shabana Mahmood is not English? Origins of the English People and Culture. While there is no specific English nationality in a legal sense, anyone from England is English, and can also be British.

"English" can refer to a person from England, the language, or an ethnic group with shared history and culture. In the context of people, it most often means someone from the nation of England, who is also British. The modern English identity is a blend of various groups, including Anglo-Saxons, who settled in Britain after the Roman Empire left.

Modern identity:

Today, English identity is a mix of various ancestries, including Celtic Britons, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, and Normans.

Nationality:

While there is no specific English nationality in a legal sense, anyone from England is English, and can also be British. British citizenship can be acquired, but English citizenship cannot. Ev

The English people trace their ethnogenesis to the post-Roman migration period in the 5th century AD, when Germanic tribes—the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes—crossed from northern Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands into Britain. These groups, invited initially as mercenaries by Romano-British leaders to repel Pictish and Scots raids, soon established permanent settlements. They displaced or assimilated the native Romano-Celtic population, pushing Celtic speakers westward into what became Wales and Cornwall, and northward into modern Scotland. 

Gold coin of King Offa written in Roman but on the side it is

Arabic is in British Museum

This created a cultural and linguistic foundation rooted in West Germanic traditions: warrior societies organised into kingdoms (the Heptarchy: Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex, etc.), pagan beliefs centred on gods like Woden and Thunor, and oral epics such as Beowulf. Early English culture emphasised kinship ties, mead-hall feasts, and a heroic code of loyalty and vengeance, with material artefacts like Sutton Hoo's ship burial reflecting elite status and trade links across the North Sea.

Evolution Through Invasions and Synthesis (8th–11th Centuries)

From the late 8th century, Viking incursions reshaped England. Danish and Norwegian raiders settled in the Danelaw (eastern and northern England), introducing Old Norse customs: thing assemblies for governance, runic script, and words still in use today (e.g., "they," "window"). Culturally, this blended with Anglo-Saxon elements—Christianity, adopted via missionaries like Augustine of Canterbury in 597, fused with Norse myths in artworks like the Franks Casket. Alfred the Great of Wessex (r. 871–899) resisted the Vikings, promoting literacy in Old English, legal codes, and a unified "Angelcynn" identity, laying groundwork for an English kingdom. By the 10th century, England coalesced under kings like Athelstan, with a culture of illuminated manuscripts, monastic learning, and burh fortifications.

The Norman Conquest of 1066 marked a pivotal rupture. William the Conqueror's Franco-Norman elite imposed feudalism, replacing Anglo-Saxon nobles with a French-speaking aristocracy. This birthed a tri-lingual society: Latin for church and scholarship, Norman French for court and law, Old English for the peasantry. Culturally, it introduced motte-and-bailey castles, Romanesque architecture (e.g., Durham Cathedral), and chivalric ideals from French epics. Yet, English resilience persisted in folklore, the Bayeux Tapestry's hybrid artistry, and the eventual resurgence of English as a written language in works like the Ancrene Wisse.

Medieval Consolidation and Cultural Flowering (12th–15th Centuries)

By the 12th century, England emerged as a centralised monarchy under the Plantagenets, with culture evolving into Middle English forms. The Magna Carta (1215) embodied emerging constitutional ideas, while the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453) fostered national consciousness against France. Cultural hallmarks included Gothic architecture (Westminster Abbey), courtly love poetry in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (blending French, Latin, and English influences), and mystery plays performed in town cycles. Peasant life revolved around the manor system, seasonal festivals, and the Church calendar, with the Black Death (1348–1350) accelerating social mobility and vernacular expression. English identity solidified as "Englishry" versus "Welshry" or "Irishry," though intermarriage and trade with Celtic neighbours enriched folklore—Arthurian legends, originally Welsh, were anglicised in Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.

Early Modern Transformation (16th–18th Centuries)

The Tudor era (1485–1603) catalysed a distinct English culture amid Reformation and Renaissance. Henry VIII's break with Rome established the Church of England, blending Protestant theology with Catholic rituals; this shaped a via media in art, music (Tallis, Byrd), and literature (Spenser's Faerie Queene). 

Elizabethan England exploded in theatre—Shakespeare's plays invented phrases and explored human universality—while exploration under Drake and Raleigh expanded horizons, incorporating global motifs into fashion and food. The Civil War (1642–1651), Commonwealth, and Glorious Revolution (1688) entrenched parliamentary sovereignty, coffee-house debate culture, and empiricism in science (Royal Society, Newton). Culturally, this produced Puritan plain style, Restoration wit (Dryden), and a burgeoning public sphere in newspapers and novels (Defoe's Robinson Crusoe).

The 1707 Acts of Union with Scotland created Great Britain, integrating Scots into a "British" supra-identity while preserving English dominance in Parliament and trade. The Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions (from c. 1750) urbanised society, birthing factory culture, Methodist revivals, and Romanticism's response in Wordsworth and Turner. Empire exported English law, cricket, and tea rituals worldwide, importing spices, cotton, and ideas that diversified cuisine and thought.

Modern England Within the United Kingdom (19th Century–Present)

The 19th-century British Empire peaked English global influence, but Victorian culture grappled with industrial squalor (Dickens' novels), evangelical morality, and evolutionary science (Darwin). Two world wars eroded empire, fostering welfare state consensus (NHS, 1948) and cultural shifts: Beatles' music, Mods vs. Rockers youth tribes, and postcolonial multiculturalism from Caribbean, South Asian, and EU migrations. Post-1945, England devolved powers to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland under the UK's unwritten constitution—a mosaic of statutes, conventions, and common law tracing to Magna Carta. The UK comprises four nations: England (majority population, no separate assembly until recent metro mayors), Wales (Senedd since 1999), Scotland (Parliament since 1999), and Northern Ireland (Assembly with power-sharing). "British" denotes citizenship of this union, derived from Roman "Britannia" (encompassing the island), but English, Welsh, Scots, and Northern Irish retain distinct identities—evident in rugby rivalries, accents, and flags.

Contemporary English culture blends heritage (Morris dancing, pub quizzes, Premier League football) with innovation: BBC broadcasting, grime music (Stormzy), and tech hubs. Regional variations persist—Geordie industriousness in the North, Cornish pasties in the Southwest—while globalisation adds curry as a "national dish" and festivals like Notting Hill Carnival. Englishness today emphasises understatement, queueing, and irony, evolving amid Brexit (2020) debates on sovereignty versus union. As the UK's core, England's story is one of absorption: Germanic roots layered with Celtic fringes, Norse vigour, Norman refinement, and worldwide borrowings, forging a resilient, adaptive culture.