In this first episode, Professor MacCulloch chronicles the roots of the idea that the English think themselves better than others and duty-bound to play a leading role in world affairs. He argues that the roots of this attitude lie in a tangle of religious motives. He traces its origins to the notion of a 'chosen people' - a Biblical idea which the monk and historian, the Venerable Bede, took lock, stock and barrel from the Jewish scriptures and applied to the early English.
Professor MacCulloch challenges the commonly held assumption that the English have a long and glorious tradition of tolerance. Rather, history shows that until recently the English were among the least tolerant peoples in the world. In a provocative take on English history, he challenges the fashionable wisdom that it is secular forces and the humanistic values of the Enlightenment that have influenced this English trait. Instead he argues that the root of English tolerance lies in its Christian history - although it's been a journey of accident rather than design.
The final programme of this series examines the idea that there is an ethnic core to Englishness. Is there any basis for the claim that to be truly English you have to be Anglo-Saxon? And what about the fact that until very recently being English also meant being Church of England Christian? In this series Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch has been arguing that God made the English. But did he also make them white and Christian?
