The History of England: Volume 1, Foundation by Peter Ackroyd Macmillan, 2011, 486 pages, $34.99 Beneath the surface of events lies a deep, and almost geological, calm, Peter Ackroyd says in the first volume of a planned history of England: From the beginning we find evidence of a deep continuity that is the legacy of an almost unimaginably distant past; there seems always to have been an hierarchical society with a division of labour and of responsibility. Yet there is a different kind of continuity, largely unseen and impalpable. The nation itself represents the nexus of custom with custom, the…