In Andrew O'Hagan's essay on Englishness whatever else we have lost we still revel in self deprecation.
Beryl Bainbridge tells us about her place - Liverpool. She says about the architecture: "All were built in a previous century and gave a framework to my life."
Catherine O'Flynn is a writer from Birmingham. She writes about growing up in her father's shop and eating a mouse's leftover chocolate.
Daljit Nagra writes a ballad set in Cranford Park, the one between Heathrow and Hounslow where a large Sikh Punjabi community have lived since the early 1960s.
Hideous Kinky author Esther Freud tells us about Suffolk 'on a silvery blue February day', in a tale about nature, the past and the future.
Helen Dunmore writes poignantly about Porthmeor beach in Cornwall in a haunting tale about storms, the sea and watery graves.
Ian McMillan's poem about the winds of Yorkshire is as surprising as it is beautiful - you might recognise a few of the draughts he describes.
Scotland-born writer Jackie Kay writes a moving tale of her mother's love and a landscape which generates inspiration and tears.
John Agard kept his vowels rolled in the West Country... but finds he can't quite fit in wherever he moves in England - but why not?
Maggie Gee comes from Poole in Dorset, her parents are English and her parents' parents are English. So why is her sense of identity more linked to the sea than the land?
Patrick Wright writes: "When I lived in East London in the early 1990s, there was one street above all that seemed beyond hope of improvement or recovery." Which one?
Sean O'Brien's evocative poem takes us to Sunk Island on the north banks of the Humber with nature as a constant companion.
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