Accident of birth …

… An American Trapped in an Englishman’s Body. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

But by far [my grandfather's] favorite topic of conversation was the United States of America. Or rather, recounting random memories born of his frequent pilgrimages to the American shores. This was the destination my grandfather had repeatedly traveled to for vacations since the 1950s, an intrepid decision back in an era when British vacationers rarely ventured far from home. The way he described it, he had felt compelled to journey to those gold-paved streets his father had once dreamed of moving to, like a sockeye salmon programmed by nature to swim upstream and spawn.