The novelist and Brexit critic Jonathan Coe suggested the BBC was obsessed with Britishness Credit: Hay Festival I am British: I was born in Homerton hospital in Hackney, and have lived most of my life no further than spitting distance from it. And yet I’ve always ticked the box for “Irish” when asked on forms for doctors or employers. Identity is complicated: first-generation immigrants are more likely to embrace “Britishness” in an attempt to blend in, but their kids are often nostalgic for the authenticity of the “home country”. I may hold a British passport, but I liked the fact that, behind closed doors, the flat in which I was brought up was a little Co Wicklow.