[Lalwendë]

I wasn't talking talking about Saxons nor was I talking about Elves, I was talking about ancient Britons (and Bretons, because they built these cultures too). These are the people who did not have a pessimistic view, but looked to the future as shown by their building of remarkable structures which would last down the millennia.

Yes, the Saxons may have had a sense of pessimism as they actually left us with little physical evidence - their wealth was portable (and this is reflected in the culture of the Rohirrim, who only left one substantial, optimistic cultural landmark, Helm's Deep, and possibly their barrows). But even so I would argue against the Saxons being totally pessimistic. We can only see a small proportion of what they most likely did produce in terms of literature, and its by no means all doom and gloom, they also left books of riddles. So we can't just make the sweeping statement that they were pessimistic.

And like it or not, nostalgia is a part of life in Britain. There's a whole industry based around it from selling National trust memberships to peddling 1950s CDs to producing endless TV shows which look back to what it was like in our schooldays. The word Retro excites us, and we argue about whether to save an old building or knock it down to put up new ones. Where I work they have had to create an entire division called Change, just to deal with out reluctance to let go of the past. It's real.