Blood and soil

A declaration of nationality is a profound statement. To say ‘I am British’ suggests that somehow I am composed of Britishness — that my fabric, my very being, is British.

Except I personally, apparently, am not particularly British. The results are back from my DNA ethnicity test, and I am 63 per cent Irish, 20 per cent Western European, 11 per cent Scandinavian and 3 per cent Iberian. How do I feel about my nationality now?

Half a test-tube of saliva was all it took for Ancestry, the genealogical organisation, to come up with these figures and, once you get results like this, the immediate reaction is to say: ‘Well it doesn’t make any difference. I am British, born in England, of parents also born in England, and that’s that.’

Inevitably though, one then begins to speculate. Since my mother’s family was from Cork my Irish portion was predictable, but the Scandinavian element is more interesting. I am fair-haired and from the north of England, so a Viking forebear is an exciting thought. Was the clue, perhaps, in my name?

I am already feeling, you see, more international than I did. The things we associate with passport nationality, my cultural loyalties and sense of identity, have shifted. The medical effects of DNA analysis are often discussed; the political ones hardly at all.

In particular, DNA provides a new way of telling you who you are. In the UK, and England especially, we seem confused about this. The old certainties of race, religion and empire have gone — and the place in our hearts they once occupied has been filled with anything from jingoistic nostalgia to national self-loathing. As we find ourselves in the midst of one of history’s great migrations, it seems likely that angst about identity is only going to increase — and if the EU referendum proved anything, it is that people in Britain feel very differently indeed about who they are and where they belong.