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We’ve always been English and we’ll always be English; and it’s precisely because we are English that we’re sticking up for our right to be Burgundians!

Mrs. Pemberton (played by Betty Warren) in Passport to Pimlico

We will perhaps forever debate the true aerodynamic potential of pigs; but here is a quite enjoyable 60-year-old example of pigs carried aloft and then allowed to descend gracefully back to earth via parachute.

I recently had the pleasure of viewing a VHS copy of the 1949 Ealing Studios comedy, Passport to Pimlico, secured through my local library. The film recounts the common experiences of the London neighborhood of Pimlico where mostly working class people who have survived wartime bombing are now muddling through the shortages and rationing of England’s grim post WWII period.

Then, during a long hot post-war summer, the explosion of a previously unexploded Luftwaffe bomb reveals a buried cache of medieval treasure in the resulting crater. Included is a parchment scroll authenticated as a royal charter of King Edward IV of England (1442-1483), who secretly ceded the Pimlico area to Charles VII (1403-1461), the last Duke of Burgundy, as a refuge after the Burgundian Wars where the Duke was presumed killed.

On finding the document, the Pimlico residents reason that their neighborhood still remains part of the Duchy of Burgundy even into the twentieth century. And because they are no longer technically on British soil, they declare their independence from the repressive paraphernalia of post-war restrictions, rationing, and taxes.

As the traditional encapsulation of the consequences such events might say, “hilarity ensues…” This is a quintessentially English film. And, it is actually an investigation of Englishness, perhaps best summarized by the film’s most famous line, used to open this post. Root on in this post…