The Anglosphere and its borders

If you go to the Travel area of our site, you'll see that we have divided it up into sections, starting with Britain and going all the way from Ireland to the USA to Down Under to Canada and Cities. And then, right at the very end, is something called "Anglosphere". What could it be?

Well, that's a very good question. And here's another: Does the English language have a word to describe those regions where English is spoken by lots of people, but isn't Britain, Ireland, the USA, Australia, New Zealand or Canada? The answer is no. We're talking here about places such as India, South Africa, Oceania and the Caribbean, for example. The French, however, have a word for countries where French is spoken and where there is a strong connection with French culture and history. It's la Francophonie .

In a sense, the Anglosphere is a kind of Anglophonie, except that it isn't, because no one can quite agree where and what its borders are. Some say they should be linguistic, others say cultural, others political. Almost all who use the term, however, feel that every part of the Anglosphere has a historical link to the United Kingdom. Writing in the Autumn 2007 issue of City Journal, the great English journalist Christopher Hitchens defined the concept as "a shared tradition of ideas and values" in "An Anglosphere Future". According to Hitchens, the father of the Anglosphere idea was the historian and poet Robert Conquest, who regarded "the multiethnic English-speaking island of Bermuda as the enterprise's headquarters." Our Travel story here later today will be from that part of the Anglosphere.