In the early twenty-firstcentury, 'Englishness' suddenly became a hot topic. A rash of art exhibitions,pop albums and coffee table books arrived on the scene, all desperate to recoverEngland's lost national soul. But when we sweep away the patriotic stereotypes, we begin to seethat England is a country that does not - and perhaps should not - exist in anyessential sense.In this provocative text combining polemic and memoir, Alex Nivenargues that the map of the British Isles should be torn apart completely as welook towards a time of radical political reform. Rejecting outdatednationalisms, Niven argues for a renovated model of culture and governance forthe islands - a fluid, dynamic version of regionalism preparing the way for anew 'dream archipelago'.