As Sigmund Freud pointed out way back in 1905, everyone feels a bit schizo about Mum. On the one hand, she carried you in the womb, she probably nursed you at the nipple. She made the greatest of sacrifices so that you exist. Heck, maybe you really love her cooking.

On the other hand, you have to escape her. The Italians have a brilliantly pejorative word for the man-child who stays in the maternal home far too late in life: mammone . No one wants to be that guy. And to avoid it, sometimes you have to scorn your mother, to break the psychological apron strings.

So it is with American attitudes to the Mother Country. The USA had many midwives, but the mother of America was unquestionably Britain/England. It was England that seeded the first colonies in Virginia and England that gave Ame

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