Some years ago I went to see a medieval farmhouse in north Devon. The owner was a hostile character with a gun and a mastiff. “Where you from?” he shouted as I approached. I said I was from London. “OK, as long as you’re not from Cornwall,” he said, spitting as he spoke. Cornwall was barely 10 miles away. This was no petty football rivalry. It reflects, we are told, an ancient genetic difference. You find it between parts of Yorkshire and Lancashire, between Scotland’s highlands and lowlands, between Pennine villages and Cumbrian dales. Gwynedd people have gazed for centuries across the Dovey estuary into Ceredigion and muttered: “They’re not real Welsh there.”
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