University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Ian Mortimer argues that the disparate peoples of England achieved a single national identity through military campaigns against neighbouring countries, epitomised by the battle of Crécy 1345 - won by "a few thousand well commanded English commoners armed with bows". But few, if any, of the archers would have been English. They were Welshmen, largely drawn from around Llantrisant in south Wales. The long bow was almost exclusively used in Wales and no English army would have been any match for French Knights without it.
David Llewellyn Davies
At the battle of Crécy, 5,000 Welsh long-bow archers sent in a devastating 60,000 arrows on to the advancing Genoese crossbowmen and French horsemen, according to former Sandhurst lecturer Philip Warner. Most of the longbowmen at Agincourt were also Welsh; they dispatched an estimated 72,000 arrows in the first appaling minute of the battle.
Bridgend, Mid Glamorgan
I have no wish to intrude upon Ian Mortimer's celebrations of Englishness, but for most of the period to which he refers, the 14th century, Berwick did not "suffer" Scottish raids - it was part of Scotland. It was not ceded formally to England until 1482.
It is hard to see why Ian Mortimer considers tea historically insignificant to the English: it had to be made with boiled water to the benefit of public health; it led to trade contacts with the East for the leaves and the West Indies for sugar, the factory production of china and pottery near deposits of coal, the first mass transport of goods by canal; also a fairly sober workforce.