How God Made the English: A Chosen People?

The first in a three-part series in which Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of Church History at Oxford University, explores both what it means to be English and what has shaped English identity, from the Dark Ages, through the Reformation to modern times. In this first episode, Professor MacCulloch chronicles the roots of the idea that the English think themselves better than others and duty-bound to play a leading role in world affairs. He argues that the roots of this attitude lie in a tangle of religious motives. He traces its origins to the notion of a 'chosen people' - a Biblical idea which the monk and historian, the Venerable Bede, took lock, stock and barrel from the Jewish scriptures and applied to the early English