“I’ve long found myself in the uncomfortable position of valuing nations but usually being repelled by nationalism. I’m not sure what to do about this. It seems to me that if you hold your country lightly, it will nourish you, and even complete you. Attach yourself to it needily or defensively or angrily, though, and it will make mincemeat of you just as surely as if you had marched off into the trenches singing the national anthem, only to come face to face with the machine gun nests. Maybe this position is too delicate for these times. Maybe it is just too late. Or maybe it is missing the point. The point, I think, is to be found beneath the surface layer of politics, and beneath the lower layers of nationhood, ethnicity and culture too. The point, as ever, is spiritual.”