Berkshire on my mind

The word ontological, I suspect, is not used as much as it was. There was a time when generations of students struggled to master the Ontological Proof of the Existence of God, as defined by St Thomas Aquinas. Not any more outside theological colleges, probably. But here, as that solemn moment approaches when one year gives way to another, is an ontological question - that's to say, a question concerned with the nature and essence of things.

It arises from an interview in the London Evening Standard in which Harold Evans, once editor of the Times and the Sunday Times, reflected on flying back to Britain after almost 20 years in the United States. "When he flew in to Heathrow yesterday," his interviewer reported, "and saw the green fields of Berkshire below, he says he felt a twinge of homecoming."

But was it Berkshire he saw? That is the ontological question, arising out of another: can Berkshire be said to exist at all? Except in a purely decorative sense, it is not at all clear that it can. For along with new-fangled concoctions like Avon, Cleveland and Humberside, this ancient country was swept off the map in the last reorganisation of local government. And given that Sir John Banham, who superintended that exercise, was cheerfully defying the hopes of those who set him to work by preserving the ancient counties rather than stamping them out, the verdict in Berkshire's case had to be suicide.

Berkshire connived in, even encouraged, its own extinction. The controlling Conservative group on the county council, perhaps out of eagerness to satisfy a Conservative government, or perhaps because they feared the county would very soon come to be dominated by the Lib Dems, backed the division of Berkshire into six unitary authorities.

The Banham commission accepted that. When the Lib Dems duly took over they tried to get the decision rescinded. Too late, they were told. The die is cast, the goose is cooked, and the severed head will very soon plop into Mr Guillotine's basket.

In this sense, there is no Berkshire. Signs welcoming you to the county - I'm sorry, the royal county, as it used be known since it contained Windsor Castle - still appear on some of its roads, but you will find beyond them no county town, no county hall, no county council; only the ceremonial trappings such as a lord lieutenancy, which Harold Evans, unless his views have greatly changed during his years in exile, would regard, I guess, as mere frippery.

Let us consider a parallel. There are others who have a ceremonial presence while lacking a real one. Does Father Christmas exist? Gritty realists would deny it. Does Berkshire? The same applies. Despite which, I think that Harold Evans is right when he looks down on Windsor Castle, or the sensuous curve of the Thames around Maidenhead, and thinks he sees Berkshire. For though Berkshire does not have a present, it certainly has a past, and to speak of Berkshire in contexts like these appeals to that history. It wouldn't surprise me, though, to learn that Evans had been plagued with rebuking letters (I do not say: in green ink) for the thoughts that formed in his mind as he gazed through the aircraft window.

Some time ago I went to Tynemouth and walked out on a cold, crisp afternoon to the ruined priory that stands on the very edge of England where the Tyne meets the North Sea. A monastery is thought to have stood here in the 7th century - around the time of Bede. The Danes attacked and destroyed it, and when it was rebuilt, destroyed it again. In the middle ages the priory became a fiercely defended fortress as much as a place of religious life.

It is hard to stand on this headland without a sense of all that, which is why I was moved to write of this place as Northumbria. But a race of geo-realists, as they probably call themselves - though I think of them as geo-pedants - now exists which will not stand for this kind of thing. Complaints about my behaviour reached the readers' editor, who felt bound to print a correction (or clarification). One must nowadays write, the Guardian was forced to concede, not of Tynemouth as part of Northumbria but of Tynemouth, Tyne and Wear.

If Harold Evans ever stands on this promontory, then, let him try to put Northumbria out of his mind and think not of ancient kingdoms but of one of our great conurbations. Lacking even a ceremonial role, lacking a lord lieutenant, Northumbria is even more of a ghost than Berkshire. Maybe he will mutter under his breath, as I shall do should I return: this is still in essence Northumbria. But not too loudly: there may be geo-pedants about.