So much of England seemed strangely, even eerily familiar. Some of that may have been psychological; one of the reasons I'd come to the island was to see and smell and walk the rolling green hills of the English Midlands where my ancestors lived for who-knows-how-many generations and from which, 400 years ago, one of them gathered his family and crossed the Atlantic for a new life in The New World. Part of it certainly was the sight of so many everyday "American" symbols — Burger King, McDonald's, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, Coke, Pepsi and Marlboro. Even the language was, for...