Let England Shake:Grayson Perry's Full English.

"The west's asleep, let England shake. Weighted down with silent dead, I fear our blood won't rise again" - Let England Shake, PJ Harvey.

Grayson Perry's good at telly. I loved his motorbike ride round America a couple of years back, his Art Club series was something of a salve during the Covid lockdowns, and his Rites of Passage series back in 2018 was both overwhelmingly moving and utterly fascinating.

But with his latest, Grayson Perry's Full English (Channel 4), he's taken on one of the thorniest subjects of all. Englishness. It's difficult because the English identity has a long, and depressing, history of being hijacked by the far-right and, these days, by Tory flag-shaggers and culture warriors. Many people of colour prefer to identify as British than English. To make a documentary about Englishness, Grayson says more than once, is to make a documentary about whiteness.

Thankfully for all concerned that doesn't mean he only interviews white people. When Grayson Perry starts by asking "who are the English?" it made me think. I was born in England, I have lived here my whole life, both my parents were born in England, and two of my grandparents were born in England. But my paternal grandfather was born in Wales, that's where my name - Evans, comes from, and the other was American. At least the biological one. My step grandfather, to my mind my real grandfather - the one who treated me like grandson, came from the Republic of Ireland.

I support England in the football and Wales in the rugby. I don't find it difficult balancing these two identities but then I don't have the kind of skin that leads people to ask me where I 'really' come from. There is much I love about England (the countryside, the sense of humour, the pubs, the music) and much I dislike (the xenophobia, the little Englander mentality, the fact that so much of the country is owned by so few, and the fact that so many English people seem to think voting Tory is in any way acceptable) but, to be honest, I don't interrogate my English identity much.

I just get on with being. But I'm happy for Perry do it for me. Over three programmes (one in the south, one in the midlands, and one in the north) he travels the "length and breadth of England" (spoken like a true politician, chatting to people, and asking them to donate objects which he will later include in an exhibition he's putting together.

About Englishness, of course. So Perry jumps in a white van with little St George's flags flapping on the wing mirrors and sets off on his journey. His driver, Kirk, is a young man from Bradford and Kirk, eventually, proves himself to be the secret ingredient to the show's success.

I'll come to that. Perry starts in Dover. To some "the arse end of England", to others the site of those totemic white cliffs immortalised by Vera Lynn during World War II. To many others, England's gateway. To others still, a migrant centre.

One of those who look at it that last way is Jeremy. Jeremy actually lives in Teddington where he works as a wedding DJ but in his spare time he likes to travel down to Dover, takes his boat out, and try to stop illegal crossings. Jeremy is defending his "history" he says, it's in his blood he says. Jeremy may physically live in Teddington but mentally he lives in the past and an imagined past at that. His contribution to Perry's exhibition is a WWII silver salver from when his uncle controlled the port of Lisbon.

Data analyst Jay is a veteran of over one hundred England football games. Perry meets Jay, first, in Munich for a game against Germany and, then, at Jay's home in Lambeth where he shows Perry his collection of flags picked up on his travels (Kosovo, Colombia) and the two of them indulge in a Jaeger or two.

Jay is black and the majority of English fans, as with the majority of English people, are white. Jay celebrates the diversity and, it seems to me, that football can be used to bring people together as much as it can be used, and has been used, to divide. Jay's donation to Perry's exhibition is an England flag dedicated to his friend Jimmy. A white fan of Leek Town F.C. and Stoke City who sadly passed before his time.

Perry himself grew up in an Essex village. Bicknacre, near Chelmsford. It looks an interesting place, it has a duality that can often be found in Essex - a mix of London overspill and slightly witchy, spooky, folk horror. I'd like to do a walk round there one day.

Perry shares a few memories before heading off, pretty quickly, to meet some druids at Stonehenge. Druidism is reviving spectacularly at the moment so Perry dresses as a deer and chats to Grey Wolf (or Philip if you prefer). Grey Wolf believes nationalism to be an abomination. In the Ice Age, he explains, nobody lived in what is now England. We, the English, are all immigrants.

In Frome, Somerset, Danny Goffey (the drummer out of Supergrass) and Pearl Lowe (fashion designer and former member of Powder and Lodger) live in a massive house with eleven bedrooms. The faded glamour, and nods to William Morris, is so strictly maintained that their mansion actually reminded me of Button House from Ghosts.

Part of me finds it offensive that people live in such luxury when tens of thousands are struggling to afford food and heating. But Grayson Perry points out that, in the grand scheme of things, Goffey and Lowe's wealth is nothing. There are people in England who own huge swathes of the country. The English public only have access to 8% of their own countryside and 3% access to their own rivers.

Tory peers, dukes, and other right wing agitators like to give the illusion that England is crowded but their land owning, something that has systematically continued since 'enclosure' began in the 14th century, is what makes it feel that way. Perry meets with people, activitists, who are trying to change all that. 

They have a belief - and it is one I share, that we need to reclaim our common heritage. For his exhibition, Perry is donated a Herne the Hunter mask. In the Peak District, Perry visits the region's only halal tea room. The Muslim lady, Rukiya, who runs it describes her, and her tea room's presence, in the English countryside as 'interesting'.

It was fine at first, Rukiya says, but when the tea room went halal she started to receive abuse and some of the locals stopped visiting. A swastika was drawn on her vehicle. Rukiya is very emotional as she talks about this and how people keep asking where she's "really from". There's a nearby village that has taken in over twenty Ukrainian refugees and those refugees, some of whom chat with Grayson, have already noticed how other immigrants (specifically those from Syria, Afghanistan, or sub-Saharan African countries) are treated much worse than they have been.

51% of Birmingham's residents are minority ethnic. Among the Asian Brits that Perry meets, cricket is very popular. Cricket is very English but it's also very colonial, very Indian, and very Pakistani. One man tells Perry how England to him means skinheads and being called a "dirty paki". He doesn't see himself as English, he sees himself as British. Another, when asked when he feels English, replies, brilliantly, "when I go to India".

It's quite a jump when Perry visits nearby Solihull. A man with ENGLISH AND PROUD tattooed on his neck appears and it doesn't look promising. The man, whose name I didn't catch, organises England's biggest St George's Day parade and he speaks, and I didn't see this coming, about the flag being hijacked by racists in the past. He speaks of inclusivity.

He made me question my assumptions. He takes Perry to a car boot sale and Perry describes this peculiar English institution as "a casual museum". He seems to approve. But I think he approves even more of the Desi pub he visits in West Bromwich. The Purewal family have run the pub, The Red Lion, since 1997 and it's once of many Indian owned pubs in the area.

The idea was that people didn't need to leave the pub to go for a curry. They could have the curry in the pub. At the Red Lion they celebrate Diwali. But they also celebrate Christmas - and St George's Day. Not far away, at a local Afro-Caribbean community centre, they're energetically playing dominoes and singing the praises of UB40. Multiculturalism in the West Midlands seems a very positive thing and, in Small Heath, Jaykae is a living example of it.

Jaykae is an English grime artist with Jamaican and American roots. He's a Muslim but, he openly admits, he's not a very good one. He drinks, he smokes, and he fucks around. Over a plate of fish'n'chips, he tells Perry that he prays in a mosque and then drinks in the pub across the road. An old acquaintance of mine once claimed you couldn't be a Muslim if you drink (relating to someone else I once knew who was, nominally, a Muslim and occasionally had a drink) but as that acquaintance was, herself, not a Muslim I thought it wasn't up to decide, or enforce, the rules of a religion she wasn't part of.

Jaykae, a big football fan, gives Grayson Perry Jude Bellingham's last ever Birmingham City home shirt. Grayson Perry's a got a few decades on Jaykae and his next stop is a pilgrimage to the music of his youth. He's in Wigan and, you've guessed it, he's off to a northern soul all nighter. His first one in the actual north of England.

Rather disappointingly, we're treated to the same stock footage of people dancing at Wigan Casino in its heyday (1973-1981) that always gets used. I wonder if it's the only film that exists of the scene. More interestingly, we hear northern soul fans talk about how tough times were back then - and how they're even tougher now. 

Another northern soul mecca was Blackpool, the Vegas of the North. I love Blackpool. I've been on family holidays, with friends to go around the Pleasure Beach, and with my mate Shep for a very memorable Half Man Half Biscuit gig. The people Perry meets in Blackpool talked about how working class northern people identified with industrial American cities like Chicago and Detroit and about how weekends, after a hard week's work, were a time to dance, a time to celebrate, a time to go hard.

When Perry talks about his love of northern bands like Joy Division, New Order, The Fall, Oasis, Pulp, and The Beautiful South it brings a great response from Kirk who calls those bands "his dad's favourites". I felt 'seen'. Ouch.

In Manchester, Perry meets with someone who fronted one of those bands. Paul Heaton is always good value. He's got vast collections of scarves, shoehorns, miner's badges, and, best of all, crisp packets (he's not a fan of Walker's who he believes monopolised and homogenised crisp production in Britain). His crisp packets are in a neat folder, or even framed (below), and his miner's badges are kept in an old Jacob's cream cracker tin.

He's a man after my own heart and when he talks, very eloquently, about community (something he feels is now in the past) and 'emotional poverty' (something he firmly believes we are suffering now) he does it with both passion and perception. It's sometimes easy to make cliched assessments about northerners but Heaton, a proud and emotionally invested northerner, avoids such pitfalls.

I get a lot more from Perry's interview with Heaton than I do with his once with Lady Inglewood who lives in a huge castle, Hutton-in-the-Forest, in Cumbria, speaks (about butterflies) with a southern accent but considers herself a northerner because she lives there. That's fair enough in itself, it takes all sorts and there are plenty of northerners who are also proud Londoners, but it didn't really add much to the programme.

Things got far more interesting when the white van men rolled into Bradford and Kirk, finally, got to tell his story. Kirk grew up in a tough council estate, his mum was on benefits and his dad, The Fall and New Order fan, overdosed on heroin. Grayson Perry and Kirk have struck up what looks like a good friendship together on this road trip so this section was, perhaps surprisingly considering the subject matter, rather lovely.

It's not the end of the journey though because the van, and the two men it, continue further north to Newcastle. When they arrive the fog, quite literally, is on the Tyne. Perry's favourite ever comic is Viz and that's something of a Newcastle institution. He meets with Simon and Chris Donald who created Viz back in 1997 and they discuss both the comic and how it reflects Englishness. Or, as so often with the large northern cities, regional pride.

Apart from his north London studio, Perry's last stop is in Southport. He meets Kate, an entrepreneur with a posh house and a ginormous telly. She has a very strong Scouse accent but she feels it's held her back. Despite this, she's a proud Liverpudlian. Liverpool, of course, has a strong regional identity and Perry ponders why northern cities, more than southern ones, have such clear identities.

I'm not totally sure I'm with him on that. I think places like Brighton and Bristol have pretty strong identities too. Maybe more importantly, Perry ponders the future of the union, the future of the UK as a reality. Lovely man that Perry he is, he manages to be optimistic. I'm less inclined to agree. I hope Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland stay in the UK (because if they don't that makes it much easier for the Tories to keep winning) but I can totally understand why, after thirteen years of Tory destruction, they may want out. Whatever happens, England will shake.