Australia is the ‘second most English country in the world’ – a description which might surprise and even annoy many Australians. New Zealand with its large Polynesian population, Canada with French Québec and polyglot Ontario, and the United States with its major Afro- and Hispanic-American component are all less ‘English’ in their basic composition. All four English-speaking settler societies are also, of course, multicultural, as is England itself. Yet in both the 1986 and 2001 censuses well over one-third of Australians declared their ancestry to be English, while many who ticked the ‘Australian’ box were also of predominantly English origin. The largest overseas-born ‘ethnic group’ is now, and has since 1788 always been, English, most of whom would reserve the word ‘ethnic’ for others. Only in 1996 did New Zealanders replace the English as the largest single immigrating group – and many of them were also of English origin.

Nor is this surprising. Although the Dutch, and arguably the Portuguese, have good claims to have ‘discovered’ Australia for Europeans, it was the English who first laid effective claim to its territory. William Dampier, from East Coker, Somerset, first explored the west coast in 1688, a century before the convict colony was set up in Sydney and nineteen years before the amalgamation of England and Scotland into the United Kingdom.