What parts of our traditions and culture makes you feel like you belong in Britain

Yup. The Thatcher post was mine.

I will also add having 1966 rammed down our throats at every chance. Andy Murray etc bring Scottish when they lose, British when they win :-)

Like yourself, I live abroad now, and culture does not mean a lot to me really. There is not that much of a difference when it comes down to it. We are all the same species. For sure there are culture differences, but the gap is subjective, I think.

Sure, I dream of being fishing by a Scottish Loch, but there are fish everywhere.

You make a good point re the UK class system. I agree. And I think when you get a certain type of visitor from the UK it can be fairly obvious, because they bring it with them. But,that's probably more the exception than the norm. And they don't tend to want to hang about.

I tripped on a step at the gym today and sprained my ankle - not one person came over - I thought of you and wondered where all the lovely Brits were.
A few years ago I fell over when out running in Paris (it's a special talent of mine - falling over when exercising) I couldn't believe how lovely the Parisians were to me - loads of them came over - I was really touched.

Interesting! I wonder if the Finnish ancestors were Vikings? I know Vikings were mainly Norwegian or Danish, but perhaps all Scandinavians thought they’d come and have a go!

Green hills, grey skies
Humour
Sitting on the step chatting to neighbours over the wall
Museums, art galleries, gigs, comedy nights, pub quizzes
Waiting for the bus in the rain

I remember, a while ago, reading a list of things that Americans were surprised by when visiting the U.K. One of them was passengers saying "thank you" to the driver when getting off a bus. That really surprised me . . . I never realised it was a 'British' thing

I have just met a married couple who have worked in many European countries during the past 30 years . . . on a recent visit to England, they encountered their first ever Quiz Night

I think not being aware of any identity when I'm at home is what makes it home. I never feel Irish in Ireland, because that's where I grew up. It wouldn't make sense to me otherwise.

I remember watching Danny Boyle's 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony and getting goosebumps because it was everything that made me proud to be British. For me, that really encapsulated Britishness, right down to championing diversity of all kinds. We feel like a different country at the moment, which makes me incredibly sad.

I do think the British sense of humour is a real thing as well. I've loved reading some of the responses on social media to outrage that New York elected a muslim mayor and would now "become like London, which is a hellhole". Cue lots of idyllic photos of life continuing in London with captions like "it's such a hellhole here. I've just had to put my brolly up and queue for my morning cuppa" type of posts.

Marmite

Knit & natter groups

National Trust properties

Tins of Quality Street & Roses chocolates at Christmas

Comedy programmes such as Dad's Army "Don't tell him, Pike!" and The Good Life

Following the Royal Family through all the ups and downs of their lives

Tea & biscuits

Cream teas (especially in the West Country)

Fish & chip suppers (particularly at the seaside)

Buying underwear from M&S

Quiz nights in pubs

Picky teas & beige buffets

Talking about the weather

Glaring at people who talk in the quiet carriage on trains and expecting them to know why you are glaring about them!

I’ve lived in other countries and travelled a lot. When I’ve had conversations with non English people about what is English / England they usually say things like

• drink lots of tea
• London Buckingham palace
• lots of rain
• beautiful green countryside
• fish and chips (lots think this but 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️)
• English breakfast
• Union Jack
• the queen (as was)
• polite, say sorry lot
• queue

It was probably down to the degree each conquered tribe submitted/ resisted as to whether they were massacred/ exiled or assimilated. Plus the need to have a subordinate peasant population. (Incidentally, massive digression but I was enthralled, when visiting Mexico City, to find that the indigenous population there are still effectively Aztecs. Seems it was only the ruling class who were wiped out, whereas the survivors of all the Western diseases are all there. They still speak Nahautl, the Aztec language).

The story of the Cornish is interesting. Basically the same people as the Welsh and Bretons, Cornish used to be spoken all the way into Devon until King Aethelstan fixed the South western border of England at the Tamar in the 10th century. He then forced all the Cornish speakers back beyond the Tamar. They've recently done DNA studies and discovered that the genetic makeups of the populations of Cornwall and Devon are dramatically different.

I don't know what it's like now but the museum on Albert Dock in Liverpool telling the story of those emigrating to the US in the most appalling conditions below deck, so well done, one felt the floor moving like the sea. Strangely enough the following years we went to Ellis Island and saw where many of them landed, it was an awful museum with little attempt to replicate what happened to those people when they landed in the New World. If it's improved in 30+ years please accept my apologies!

I believe you OP, if only because it's something that so many English (and other) people do unthinkingly! Look at all these endless lists of quintessentially English culture and history posted on here as 'British'.

For me personally, I'm Scottish - culturally and British - legally. Scottish doesn't exist as a nationality (yet) so I am a British citizen / national. My British passport is the legal identity and set of rights / responsibiltiies that I take through the world with me, but my Scottish culture and heritage is the sum total of my own personal version of everything that people mention - pints in the pub on a Saturday after the football / rugby, the smell of the breweries in Edinburgh on a cold winter day, the buildings of the Old Town glittering in the early evening as the sun goes down, the empty spaces of the moors and mountains, the colours of heather and granite and sparkling turquoise seas reflected in beautiful fabrics and landscape paintings, the stomping of the feet and clapping of hands at a wedding ceilidh, ham sandwiches, sausage rolls and endless cups of tea at a funeral, people saying 'aye' and 'ah ken' with a nod of their heads, nippy sweeties, lucky bags, ringing the bells at New Year, the pipes, giein' it laldy at a late-night lock-in, Walter Scott, Rabbie Burns and the whole clanjamfrie, 'gaun yersel' and 'kent his faither', the smell of my mums mince and tatties, 'come away in, you're freezing out there', and everything else that means HOME. No matter how far I wander.

Try writing your own list. What is home to you?

@Ticklyoctopus That is very common. I’m completely English/Scottish/Irish/Welsh apart from 7% Swedish. Scandinavians (usually fishermen) would often come here and settle in Scotland/Eastern England. Most of us have a smidge of Scandi in us.

Are we allowed to use the word 'banter' though? So many threads on this site where someone has taken contrived offence at a throwaway remark when in reality most people would either tell them to 'go away' using whatever words they were comfortable with or they would throw one back! When we lived in Germany, working with MOD, we were out for the evening and the German husband of one of the women said he knew when British people liked you, they didn't feel the need to be over polite to you!

School fetes/summer fetes in general
bunting
tiny sandwiches eaten on a picnic blanket
living close enough to pop to the seaside for a dip
sitting on father christmas's knee
father christmas NOT SANTA
the nativity
visiting churches and cathedrals
parks
beer gardens
fish and chips
pubs that serve proper pub grub
town/city christmas decorations
picturesque towns/cities
national rail
complaining about the trains
complaining about the weather
sports day

Yes it’s interesting you should say that. My dad became convinced (for reasons best known to himself - maybe he suspected an affair) that we had Portuguese ancestry, so took a DNA test. Dad is ‘English’ in that his parents, grandparents, great grandparents, great great grandparents etc… going back some 400 years are all traced as being born in England, and not near the borders. His test came back 60% ‘English’ (Anglo Saxon), 30% ‘British Isles/Celtic’ and 10% Finnish (wtf?).

Oh dear…another illusion bites the dust!

This. I just had a one word answer, really - "bantz". But I guess the word I would choose if i were to be slightly more highbrow is "irreverence". This answer is better though.

My husband is an archaeologist so he’s up-to-speed with changing attitudes to the historical/cultural/ethnic make-up of the British Isles. He says that ‘Celtic’ is now best seen as a linguistic term only - there wasn’t a Celtic ‘race’, as such, and certainly Ireland and Scotland contain people of varying heritage. What we call the Scots were actually an Irish tribe who crossed to SW Scotland and their culture was different from the tribes in the Highlands, as well as from the rather mysterious Picts.

I think DNA has shown that, far from the invading Germanic tribes pushing all the British population into Wales, there were/are still great numbers of Romano-British people in what we now call England. So the Saxons etc invaded, but seem not to have displaced the indigenous British as much as we once thought.

We have varying cultures for sure within these islands, but we shouldn’t put too much emphasis on perceived ethnic differences. These have been over-emphasised in the past.

Years ago people cooked in aluminium pans too and they survived!

I think the same goes for many northern English communities. Certainly in my area (Liverpool) you’ll hear “Scouse, not English”, and that goes back to the Thatcher era and the destruction of our industries. People are generally very anti-establishment and dislike the royal family. The powers that be left our city to rot, so why should we have any loyalty to them? Our community is made up of descendants of immigrants who came from all over the world, but they are scousers and they are ‘our people’. This sets us apart from the rest of the country and our scouse culture is felt far more strongly than our British culture by most people here.

I was just about to say the same about France! Garden centres are full of Christmas decor and shops have their decorations up.

I still think people in France buy fewer items and the decoration of houses is more ‘subtle’ than in the uk!