Saints Alive

Last week, on Wednesday 23 April, the nation of England celebrated St George's Day. At Kumali's nursery the children were all asked to come in wearing red and white clothing, and they spent the day drawing and learning about castles, dragons and knights in shiny armour atop horses.

Now, despite being born and bred up the road in Scotland, I had no real objection to this show of Englishness. After all my parents are both London born and bred, and I like to think I am more mature these days when it comes to issues of nationality. As the Scots would say, "We're a' Jock Tamson's bairns." Loosely translated: one race, the human race.

But I decided to do a bit of checking into St George, and the other saints of the British Isles.

It turns out St George may not even have existed at all, and he almost certainly never slayed any dragon . If he was real, he was at best Turkish and was brought to England's attention by the Crusaders. Bottom line is he had nothing whatsoever to do with England.

I don't gloat writing that. St Andrew, Scotland's patron saint, had no links with Scotland. He was, allegedly, one of Jesus's apostles and his death inspired the national flag of Scotland, the Saltire, as he felt unworthy being crucified in the same way as Jesus so asked for a diagonal cross.

Ireland's saint, Patrick, was born in Scotland, lived in England and was imprisoned by the Irish! Only my own favourite, Saint David, the Welsh patron saint had any real connection with Wales. A man after my own heart, St David's last words were apparently, "Do the little things in life."

So what are all these saints about, why are they celebrated and isn't about time they, in line with all else in the world today, were updated and modernised? A Dr Ian Bradley, reader in practical theology and church history at St Andrew's University, thinks so. He is campaigning for the adoption of a new saint to unite the British Isles, and the man he has in line is St Aidan, Apostle of Northumbria.

Aidan was born in Ireland, educated in Scotland and lived in England, goes the argument, so he is representative of Britain. Except Wales!

None of it makes much sense to me, and in multi-cultural Britain, and bearing in mind the chances of us all being either Muslims or Taoists in the next 50 years, it seems we all need to be thinking a bit further out the box.