It’s strange, you know, Longhand Readers? Up until June of 2017 I’d never visited the fair green isle. Yet I have felt it to be my home, at least in the spiritual sense, for many a year.
So, wherefore am I an Anglophile?
It may have started with my taste in music, as a teen. I was a fan of British classic rock groups like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. I embraced the “englishness” in their lyrics and demeanor.
Rock music was my “gateway drug”
I found the humour of it, the cynicism, the sarcasm, the sense of irony uncannily speaking to me. “akin to me”, as my favourite male protagonist, Edward Rochester would say. It drew me in. Rock music was my “gateway drug”, so to speak.
I was then drawn to the literature. Always an avid reader, with a language oriented brain, I started to read the classic novels, in their original language. Austen, Bronte, Dickens, Shakespeare. I fell in love with the language, the characters, the atmosphere, the land.
In my twenties I developed a liking to progressive rock, and from that a love of British folk music. Many folk rock groups performed ancient folk ballads. I loved them so much that I got to reading (and rereading, and rereading) the Child Ballad collection. I learned to sing them.
I was then hooked and enamoured with the folklore and history of the British Isles. (another reason for becoming a historical romance novelist).
Over the years I also realised that I had a sometimes uncanny connection to England and Scotland. I had a “thing” for tartan, tweed and argyle pattern, even before I knew their significance, I have always loved the colour purple which is prominent in Scotland’s celebrated flowers, heather and thistle, I feel drawn and forlorn whenever I see images from there, I have vivid, recurring dreams of being there, in different periods of time in history.
I can speak, write, think, create in English and even in dialect, though it isn’t my first language, And while I can also speak Spanish and French as well as my native tongue, no language touches my heartstrings as much as English does.
Whenever I land in Britain my heart sings “home”, It breaks when I return to my country.
I do believe I am a hopeless case.
And this, fair friends, is why thy blogger is an Anglophile.
Share your own stories, Longhand Readers. Why did you become anglophiles?
Fare thee well for now, Longhand Readers
Emily xx