What’s great about Great Britain? GQ has asked this question[1]. Produced a nice article that looks at this subject with a cultural eye.
It’s a bit retro. When we (Brits) start talking about how great pubs are there’s a tendency to forget how many we have lost in the last decade. If we loved them so much, then more would have survived crushing economic pressures.
Brit pop was a wonderful surge in creativity that swept across the country in the 1990s. It was good – mostly. Riding that wave, because we are romantic souls about the past, are the band Oasis with their multimillion £ world tour. Accounts of which are tremendously positive.
I think I can take a position about what’s great about Great Britain. Having lived in Germany and travelled a bit, my perspective isn’t too insular or defensive.
Because we are no longer the world’s premier power and imperialism is a fading memory, we’ve shed the stiff upper lip and bowler hatted civil service bureaucrat image. It’s there in film and television to remind us of former times. It’s few who want to return to all that deep seriousness.
That seriousness is the burden that the US carries. If they send a gun boat somewhere it means business. For Brits it’s more a symbol of still being on the stage. Don’t get me wrong, as a country we box way beyond our size.
For all the right-wing jerks who parade around with false patriotism, our great strength is diversity. Having that legacy of the world map once having been painted in a great deal of red, we can now engage with multiple cultures and benefit from them all.
Number one of the lists of inherited advantages is being able to speak to the world. Not in their language but in ours. English doesn’t belong to the English any more, it belongs to the world. They amount to a lot; the times I’ve had fun reading Brussels English and being amazed at how it’s being used.
Pick a discipline. Science, technology, humanities, art, entertainment, there’s always a Brit that can be named as shaping the world. Influencing others and providing a spark that sets off a flame.
Now, being more parochial, I’ll look around me, in this town, and see a diversity of styles from punks who never stopped being punks to suited tie wearing customer service executives. Welly booted farmers in the town for a day to young gamers stuck to their small screens.
Sport is another anchor. If we (Brits) didn’t invent it, then it’s a derivative of something we did invent. Top that with the eccentricities from international tiddlywinks[2] to stone skimming. Despite the school of hard knocks we still value fair play.
Comedy is taking a downturn, but the British legacy is monumental. Irreverent, rebellious or intricate, often all three, even if we (Brits) do invite in the bland factory-made stuff from the US. In a unregarded small corner there’s a someone writing hysterical lines waiting to be discovered.
So far, as a nation, 2025 won’t go down in history as our best year. I’ve every faith that the best is still yet to come. Unlocking that dynamic zest, that quirky imagination, that complex amalgam happens several times every decade. Let’s hope the spark is just about to be set off.
[1] https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/
[2] https://iftwa.org/history-of-iftwa/
John Vincent 