Is Britishness cream tea and the queen? Or curry and Zadie Smith?

LONDON — Every so often, the British like to ask themselves what it is that makes them British. And just as often, they seem to conclude that if you need to ask, you cannot really know.

Is Britishness just a plum-colored passport or is it something else? Is it to do with cricket and warm beer, Buckingham Palace, tolerance and modesty and quaint Morris dancers?

Or should the national image be modified to include binge-drinkers, teenage gangs and soccerhooligans - the standard-bearers of a darker post-industrial Britain?

Is Britishness more to do these days with inner-city grit and people from what was once an empire unsure of their welcome in a land still groping for tolerance?

And who, indeed, could evoke modern Britain without mentioning a retail mania that keeps the entire economy afloat? If Napoleon once belittled the English as a nation of shopkeepers, what scorn might he now heap on this nation of shoppers?

Most recently, Gordon Brown, the (Scottish-born) chancellor of the Exchequer and heir apparent to Prime Minister Tony Blair, raised the question anew by musing in public that the British might do well to emulate the Americans - setting aside a day to celebrate their Britishness, for instance, and taking a bit more pride in their flag.

He cited the 4th of July as an example - although, like many post-colonial anniversaries across the globe, that is more a day for bidding farewell to Britishness than embracing it.

More somberly, the lethal London bombings last July, carried out by British-born Muslims, confronted the nation with a stark question of identity: If this multicultural society was to embrace all its disparate strands after decades of immigration from the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and most recently Eastern Europe, what common values should bind a new Britishness transcending faith, race or origin?

Part of the response came in new rules last November requiring would-be citizens to undergo a formal examination based on a 146-page primer called "Life in the United Kingdom."

The volume, published by the Home Office, sets out Britain's history from around the Roman conquest onward, touching on some behavioral characteristics depicted as betraying an essential Britishness.

"If you spill a stranger's drink by accident, it is good manners (and prudent) to offer to buy another," a section entitled Pubs advises.

Long before the bombings in July, though, the question of Britishness had filtered through the prism of what is called devolution - the establishment of separate parliaments and other political structure in Wales, Scotland and, with greater difficulties, Northern Ireland.

As that exercise underlined, Britishness comes second to Scottishness and Welshness in Scotland and Wales, while in England itself, Britishness tends to get confused with Englishness - a narrower and equally elusive definition that sometimes seems to have been hijacked by right-wing, anti-immigrant extremists.

Common to all these considerations are the changes that have recontoured Britain's profile.

Once, questing for an idyllic expression of Britishness, John Major, a former Conservative prime minister, dwelt on cricket-driven images of "long shadows on county grounds, warm beer and invincible green suburbs." That is the Britain whose disappearance was already being mourned in the verse of the former poet laureate John Betjeman, who died in 1986: Nostalgia for the essence of Britishness, it seems, is a moveable feast, looking back fondly to an era of bad food, indifferent storekeepers and haughty aristocrats that, nevertheless, seemed somehow better.

Twenty years after Betjeman's death, it is not only the landscape and the cityscapes that have changed.

Between 1991 and 2001, when Britain's population increased by 2.2 million to 58 million, more than half the increase was made up of people born in other countries, according to a recent survey in The Guardian newspaper.

Britishness, redolent of the monarchy, the church, cream teas and standing politely in line, must now share space with Britishness expressed through the literature of Monica Ali and Zadie Smith.

If Britishness once meant reserve, it now means the end of deference (even the time-honored queue is under threat in the urban jungle). And if Britishness once implied diffidence about public displays of wealth, the new Britishness - at least since the Margaret Thatcher era - trumpets its success through the multiple tailpipes of late-model (German-owned) Bentley and (American-owned) Aston Martin sports cars.

But there is a more subtle tie between Englishness and Britishness. The two are not synonymous, though some values may be claimed by both.

Consider for instance, Rupert Brooke's World War I sonnet, "The Soldier," which muses: "If I should die, think only this of me/ That there's some corner of a foreign field that is forever England."

Understated valor is probably common to the British and English self-perception. Yet, perhaps by default, the red-and-white flag of St. George, as much as the red, white and blue of the Union Jack, has come to stand for a cruder jingoism verging on the racism of the hard right and the violence of soccer hooligans.

And if Britishness may be defined by its antonyms, then it is certainly not Frenchness or German-ness.

Britishness, of course, is never so demonstrative as when its icons are threatened. Just last week the BBC (British Broadcasting Corp., not English or Scottish or Welsh!) announced plans to abandon a medley of British songs called the U.K.Theme (www.sterlingtimes.org/music_themes20.htm) that is played at 5:30 a.m. - hardly the time for raw patriotism, in peacetime at least.

In response, a chorus of voices, including that of Brown, rose to the songs' defense. Personally, Brown said, "I've always seen the U.K. Theme as one of the symbols of Britishness and a celebration of British culture."

He had, perhaps, forgotten that one strand of Britishness - as perceived by outsiders at least - lies in the art of the supercilious putdown, usually performed by upper-crust types and exemplified by David Cameron, the leader of the opposition Conservatives.

In response to Brown's call for a more demonstrative, American-style patriotism, Cameron chose last week to praise British restraint.

"This coyness, this reserve, is, I always think, an intrinsic part of being British," he said. "We are understated. We don't do flags on the front lawn."