The Essay: Part 3 of 4

A Sense of Ourselves: Four writers and immigrants to Britain give the outsider's perspective on Britishness. Eva Hoffman is a Polish Jew who came to Britain in 1992, having spent most of her adult life in the United States. What she found confounded her prejudices of a stodgy, emotionally closed and uncommunicative culture. But she also found a society in a state of rapid flux, a culture which seemed unsure of the balance to strike between absorbing outside influence and retaining traditional values. Eva reflects on how we should handle this crisis of confidence.