Flags

Whether you are lucky enough to have a flag pole in your garden (and it is possible to find some very reasonably-priced and nice-looking ones on the internet) or have to make do with a broom-handle, or just hang them out of the window, there's nothing that quite stirs the heart like a flag fluttering in the breeze.

Of course, there's the Union Jack or the Cross of St George but, as proud Englishmen and women, what other flags can we fly?  Here are some suggestions.

The White Dragon Flag of the English

An old flag of the English and probably one of the flags that King Harold of blessed memory would have fought under at the Battle of Hastings.  This flag has its own website (http://whitedragonflagofengland.com) where you can read more about it and buy flags to fly (although you can buy it elsewhere, as well).  Becoming more common in England these days, but still a talking point.

The Flag of Wessex

A version of the white dragon flag that shows a golden wyvern (a dragon with only front legs).  According to Wikipedia, both Henry of Huntingdon and Matthew of Westminster talk of a golden dragon being raised at the Battle of Burford in AD 752 by the West Saxons.

The Flag of St Edmund (county flag of Suffolk)

Before St George was adopted by England's Norman kings in the fourteenth century, the patron saint of England was St Edmund.  There are many who think that he should be again, not least because he was an Englishman.  Others differentiate between England and the English people, seeing St George as the patron saint of the former and St Edmund of the latter.  The flag of Suffolk combines both saints - St George's cross and the crown and crossed arrows of St Edmund.