Violent

It's oft quoted, but here it is in full:

The English are potentially very aggressive, very violent. We have used this propensity to violence to subjugate Ireland, Wales and Scotland. Then we used it in Europe and with our empire, so I think what you have within the UK is three small nations...who've been over the centuries under the cosh of the English. Those small nations inevitably sought expression by a very explicit idea of nationhood. You have this very dominant other nation, England, 10 times bigger than the others, which is self-confident and therefore has not needed to be so explicit about its expression. I think as we move into this new century, people's sense of Englishness will become more articulated and that's partly because of the mirror that devolution provides us with and because we're becoming more European at the same time.

Have we really kept the other nations "under the cosh"?

Was it really England's empire?

And how much of it was "English" violence and aggression, as opposed to the violence and aggression of the British or England's rulers?