Yup, I don't know what GP is talking about. English literature would still be the most amazing national literature in scope and depth and popularity even if it didn't have Shakespeare.

But it does.

You're right, and sort of wrong at the same time.

Maybe it's just my poor schooling but the only author we ever /had/ to read was Shakespeare, my mother introduced me to Orwell, my grandfather to Dickens.

The schools only ever introduced Shakespear, like he was the only notable author in the last thousand years.

That sounds like a terrible school and such a waste. I had Shakespeare, Dickens, C. Bronte, Kipling, Graham Greene, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, all as required reading plus loads of stuff we were encouraged to read plus extra-curricular drama put on for the public such as Pinafore, Pirates of Penzance, Pygmalion.

Just in case anyone is still around from those days that was Park Senior High School, Swindon, Wilts, 1970-1974. The more I hear of other people's schooling the more grateful I am for the schools I went to

When and where did you go to school? That seems like an exception rather than a rule.

perhaps, I can only speak for myself not others.

and to be fair, it was Warwickshire.

I think (or hope?) they're trying to highlight how ridiculous it is to make sweeping statements about a large country is.