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> Fortunately hardly anyone in Britain actually thinks in terms of racial or ethnic purity.

That's why Robin Hood, with its tales of darstardly French and stalwart Anglo-Saxon Englishmen has survived hundreds of years. Because no-one in England thinks about racial or ethnic purity.

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Amusingly, for King Arthur the "stalwart Anglo-Saxon(s)" were the invading enemies - and yes he probably is mostly fictional but things like the Y Gododdin do refer to battles by the natives against the Angles.

[I love mentioning the Y Gododdin as I can see Edinburgh Castle out the window as I write this].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_Gododdin

Indeed. I very much enjoy Bernard Cornwell's take on the Arthurian mythos, where he tries to strip out a lot of the later additions to the myth and tell the stories as the struggle of the post-Roman Britons to retain their kingdoms in the face of the Germanic invasions.

The English-French rivalry isn't rooted in race or ethnicity, just hundreds of years of killing each other.

It's more along the lines of sporting team rivalry.

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