The death of David Bowie, professional English eccentric, reminds me of this article by Benjamin Schwarz:

From The American Conservative:

Unmaking England

Will immigration demolish in decades a nation built over centuries?

By BENJAMIN SCHWARZ • January 11, 2016

… The common law, Roger Scruton writes,

becomes a familiar companion, an unspoken background to daily dealings, an impartial observer who can be called upon at any time to bear witness, to give judgement and to bring peace. … It was the root cause of the law abidingness of the English, and their ability to live side by side as strangers in a condition of trust. All communities depend upon trust: but in few communities does trust extend beyond the family; in almost none does it embrace the stranger, while conceding his right to remain a stranger, and to go about his business undisturbed. England, however, was a society of reserved, reclusive, eccentric individuals who constantly turned their backs upon one another, but who lived side by side in a common home, respecting the rules and procedures like frosty members of a single club.

The insinuating effect of the common law helped forge a distinctive temperament across centuries and class lines. Common law, then, at once clarified a collective identity while, in both its direct and indirect effects, it circumscribed the sway of that identity. Long predating the nationalism of the modern state, this national identity exercised a profound, even instinctual, hold over the English mind and imagination. But it didn’t make demands and was resolutely un-communal.