Mount - How England made the English: from why we drive on the left to why we dont talk to our neighbours

From Hedgerows to Heathrow

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He had a horror of showing white hairy shin between sock-top and trouser cuff when sitting down, legs crossed it was in some ways the besetting and prototypical English sartorial sin.

William Boyd, Ordinary Thunderstorms (2010)

Our weather has stayed much the same for centuries, global warming notwithstanding. It shouldnt be surprising that related national stereotypes have remained consistent, too.

In letters sent home from the Vindolanda fort at Hexham, Northumberland, near Hadrians Wall, in around AD 100, Roman legionaries long for fine Italian Massic wine, garlic, fish, lentils, olives and olive oil. And they complain about the food the Picts eat pork fat, cereal, spices and venison. Todays Geordie diet is still some distance from the Mediterranean one.

Whats more, these Mediterranean legionaries, marooned at the northern edge of the Roman Empire, were freezing cold the whole time.

One letter from southern Gaul the blissfully hot south of France is addressed to a poor shivering legionary at Vindolanda, listing the contents of the accompanying package: Paria udonum ab Sattua solearum duo et subligariorum duo socks, two pairs of sandals and two pairs of underpants.

Just like the rest of us, Roman soldiers needed underpants and thick socks in the frozen north, particularly if they were sun-kissed, olive-skinned Italians and Frenchmen; not robust, barely clothed Geordies, cheerfully exposing their stark white, goose-fleshed torsos to the easterly winds that whip straight from Scandinavia into Northumberland across the North Sea.

Nothing changes very much, as a quick survey of outfits in Newcastles Bigg Market on a gloomy Saturday night in February compared with those worn by Italians for a sunlit winter stroll around the Colosseum will tell you.

In AD 98, the Roman historian Tacitus said of England, Caelum crebris imbribus ac nebulis foedum; asperitas frigorum abest The sky is obscured by constant rain and cold, but it never gets bitterly cold.

Tacitus was right our climate is a temperate, rainy one. While London only gets 1,500 hours of sunshine a year (and Glasgow and Belfast, 1,250 hours), Rome basks in 2,500 hours of annual sun. Northumberland where those shivering legionaries were stationed gets just 1,350 hours.

Its even worse in winter, when our northern daylight hours are that much shorter in the whole of January, London gets forty-five hours of sunshine; Rome 130.

Our national character is dictated by figures like this. They also dictate the way the country looks and the way we look, the way we dress, the shade of our complexion. Some linguistics experts have even suggested that the differences between the American and English accent were produced by the differing climates.

Brightly coloured parrots and tigers live in tropical climates; brown, black, white and grey animals sheep, cows, rabbits are better off further north. And so it is with humans we look different as we go north.

Exposed white shins arent a problem for natives of southern countries; southern skins never go lobster red. The strange English taste for being toasted to an uneven shade of scarlet on their summer holidays is a direct product of not getting much sun at home.

You get used to eating caviar and, at some point, it begins to taste as ordinary as anything else, Boris Becker said in 2011.

The same goes for sunshine when youre abroad, you dont go in frantic search of what you already have at home; you seek out what you dont get enough of.

Generous supplies of southern heat mean southern Europeans dont rush to grab every second in the sun; or fling open the windows on cold winter days when a watery sun reveals itself for a moment or two, and you can see your breath indoors. Nor do they dress quite so badly or go topless, as many Englishmen do when the sun comes out.

In Mediterranean countries, the heat is so stitched into their souls that, in summer, they think, Ill wear my normal June/July/August clothes, which means light trousers, long-sleeved cotton shirts and loafers. Those used to hotter climates realize that covering up in light cotton makes you cooler, in both senses, than exposing raw flesh to the sun.

Meanwhile, the English think, God, its hot. Lets wear something special/ludicrous to celebrate, something that exposes as much skin as possible.

The odd thing is that the English invented elegant, cool summerwear: linen shirts, trousers and suits. But that was when they spent a long time often whole lifetimes living in hotter countries. Dealing with a blistering sun on a daily basis means youre wary of it, rather than hungrily chasing it, mad dogs and Englishmen apart. Victorian Englishmen learnt to absorb the prospect of heat into their everyday dressing routine, and do their best to avoid it.

Our poor modern fashion sense isnt helped either by our northern puritanical streak: a fear of showing off that bleeds into a fear of dressing well, even in cold weather.

The climate also explains the relative lack of shutters in England as opposed to the Mediterranean who needs to keep the sun out over here? Thats why our shutters are on the inside, if and when we have them theyre used for security at night, not for providing shade during the day.

In hot southern countries, you open the inner windows and leave the outer shutters closed; in colder northern countries, you open the inner shutters in the morning, and leave the outer windows closed for most of the year.

The English awkwardness in company is also related to our climate. We simply dont get out as much as southern Europeans: their warmer climates and longer winter days induce a chattier, more outdoors existence.

Our weather means weve never really embraced the Continental caf society, envisaged by Tony Blair with the relaxation of licensing hours in 2005. The French and Spanish sip wine gently through the warm night, punctuating the evening with a leisurely passeggiata; we drink beer heavily, furiously and statically, huddled up indoors against the cold, desperately using drink to fuel our stilted conversations.

Bad weather explains our constitutional gloom, our tendency to play things down, and our inability to work up much excitement over anything. All human beings are sub-tropical in origin: we only left the warmth of Africa several hundred thousand years ago. With our sun-kissed, atavistic DNA, were still not too pleased with the grey, damp life and the short winter days that come with living more than 50 degrees north of the equator.

Because of our gloomy, northern climate, we just cant do piazza life. Although weve had pedestrianized streets for almost four centuries the Pantiles in Tunbridge Wells was the first in England, dating from 1638 were not well-practised at staying calm in large open spaces after dark.

The British Character. Absence of the Gift of Conversation, by Pont in Punch, 18 September 1935.

Come closing time, and pedestrianized streets across the country like Carfax, in Oxford become pedestrianized fighting areas. (To be fair, despite our extreme public drunkenness, were much less drunk in our cars than people in most other countries in the world, thanks to Draconian drink-driving laws; there are many fewer scratched cars on the street here than abroad.)