St George’s Day is approaching and, as ever, it’s the opportunity to celebrate all that is quintessentially English, from Sunday roasts to village greens to singing Jerusalem, to incessant rain to our wealth of excellent cheeses.
So here’s a look at this year’s festivities, and a bit of a dive into why we celebrate the day of England’s dragon-slaying patron saint. What is St George’s Day? Despite the warrior saint being our own patron, he wasn’t actually English.
He was born in the third century in Cappadocia, what is modern day Turkey. And nor did he visit these shores. Nonetheless, word of his Christian martyrdom inspired us to adopt him.
A soldier in the Roman army, he refused to denounce his Christianity in the fourth century, and was executed for his trouble, during the persecutions of the Emperor Diocletian.
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