As it’s that tricky time of year, I thought I’d repeat this bit from a review I wrote of Mel Gibson’s The Patriot: “I could enjoy The Patriot without too many (English) patriotic qualms. In many ways the American Revolution was a continuation of a long argument over how Britons should be ruled, the second round, if you like, of the seventeenth century civil war in England. Yes, the troops sent across the Atlantic by (German) George III were sent packing — but it was by folks called Washington, Gates and Pickens. It hurt at the time, but when we British consider our history, a defeat only counts when it’s to people with names like Schmidt, Watanabe or Depardieu. In the Revolutionary War, you see, we Brits essentially lost to ourselves, and that’s not so bad. We just won’t mention that Lafayette fellow. So in The Patriot, you watch two opposing armies, both of which march under the red, white and blue — the English of the Philadelphia regime against the English of the London government. In the end, the better Englishmen won. The away team, my team, left the pitch at Yorktown and went off to establish a second, wider, empire — a remarkable achievement, Mel, for such a feeble race. The victors, meanwhile, went on to build a country that has inspired the world. So, this year, as I always do, I’ll celebrate the fourth of July. Drink in hand, I’ll toast the men who made this possible, the founding fathers who wrote, in that Declaration of Independence, some of the finest words that have ever been written in the English language. Yes, that’s right, the English language. My language. “