A READER educates me:

While you have not actually made any error in referring to CS Lewis as British, or stating that the State and Church are indivisible in England (Fidelis Defensor and all that), it does reinforce a popular misconception about our nation.

Americans often mistake 'England' for 'Britain', and by marking out CS Lewis as being British (which of course he was) but being from England (which he was also) it reinforces the idea that there is no division between the two, that England is in fact the state.

It would have been more accurate to describe Lewis as an Englishman, thus being specific about the part of Britain he was born, and stating that in Britain there was no division between Church and State.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is actually four nations, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, each with slightly different laws, and in the cases of the Celtic nations their own assembly, though all answering (at present) to the same head of state.

I appreciate that this may seem minor, but it's actually quite important to us.

I myself am an Englishman (despite having a Scottish name), but am a citizen of Britain.

My mother is a Scot, but not a citizen of England despite the fact that she lives there, do you see?

Picky maybe, but that's us.

We've been arguing about the concept of us as a nation since the Romans decided we had to become one and the point has still not been settled.

Thanks, and my apologies. What can you expect from a colonial?

I have no excuse, since I was an English major in college, and should know better.

We in the United States have a similar argument, centered around the idea of "states rights" and dating back in part to the fact that the various states were once considered to be independent entities.

I'm also struck by the parallel to Iraq—another group of peoples which a more powerful nation "decided had to become one".

In that case, the more powerful nation happened, by historical accident, to be Britain, but that has nothing to do with the parallel.

The interesting question to me is this: if the point hasn't been settled for the British (I hope I'm using that correctly) since the Romans, is it any surprise that it is not yet settled for Iraq, which has only been a national unit (in its present form, anyway) since 1926?

When the Bush administration expects Iraq to come together, under a form of government that is alien to their culture, in almost no time flat, on our terms, merely because we have the guns, isn't it asking a lot?

How the colonial mind wanders...