‘As tedious as a tired horse…worse than a smoky house’ was how Shakespeare’s Hotspur described Wales’s national hero, Owain Glyndŵr. Perhaps, as the late Jan Morris wrote of these words for The Spectator, it could be a timeless characteristic of all Welshmen. The Welsh can be defensive, melancholic and (whisper it quietly) prone to self-pity, particularly when it comes to relations with England.