Far from being defined by race, the culture in its DNA is polyethnic, its tongue a bewildering yet beautiful mixture of languages now spoken by over 2 billion people. The genius of British culture is its plasticity, as Russel Kirk argued in America’s British Culture. There is between Americans and Britons, as John Adams put it to King George III in 1785, an “esteem, confidence and affection-or, in better words, the old good nature and the old good humor between people, who, though separated by an ocean, and under different governments, have the same language, a similar religion, and kindred blood.” Britain and America’s kaleidoscopic flourishing of ethnicity has not toned-down this bond. Americans expressed genuine affection toward an office to which we are connected by “the mystic chords of memory.” 30 million Americans watched Prince Harry wed the American Meghan Markle, and the outpouring of condolences from Americans-including every living President-upon Queen Elizabeth II’s death showed more than mere diplomatic discretion for the passing of an allied head of state. Nowhere is this tendency more seen than in Americans’ love of the monarchy and royal family.

There is something, Hitchens noted, about the two countries that reinforces the conservative. Buckley invited Christopher Hitchens and John O’Sullivan to parley over England’s continued influence on America. In a charming old Firing Line episode, William F.

Broken Wing by Judith James