The Union Jack - The Story of the British Flag
by Nick Groom
Atlantic Books, HK$165
Raised at dawn, lowered at dusk, the Union flag once fluttered around the clock in an empire on which the sun never set. Bristol University historian Nick Groom undertakes an exhaustive study - nearly 100 pages of pictures, notes and appendices - of this symbol, the Union flag on land, the Union Jack at sea. The flag is as complicated a product of negotiated compromise as the history of the British Isles, dating back to Celtic tattoos and Julius Caesar's encounter with the blue-dyed Britons. In specific order, the Union flag comprises a red Irish saltire (a diagonal cross) deriving from the house of FitzGerald and representing St Patrick, laid over a white Scottish saltire, the cross of St Andrew on a navy blue field. Navy blue was better suited to wind and weather than pale blue. The red cross of St George, England's patron saint, is laid squarely over them both, although when flown on Scottish ships, the white cross used to have supremacy. Since devolution, the white cross is again flying, as is the lion - a product of the defeat of the heraldic dragon by the French in 1066.