I was born abroad to British parents.
For me, the best thing is the cultural history. I don’t just mean history, as in kings and queens and battles, etc. I mean the layers and layers of cultural history - the astonishing number of writers and artists and scientists who have lived and worked on this island. When I walk around Cambridge, for example, it amazes me think that Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, Milton and Nabokov all lived and studied there, that it was the place in which the atom was first described, and where DNA was discovered. All in one small town!! I visited Oxford over Christmas, and walked past the pub where Tolkien read The Lord of the Rings to friends as he worked on it. No one had even bothered to put a sign up! Britain has SUCH an insanely rich cultural history, that things like that are ignored. In some countries, that pub would be a major tourist attraction.
I also love the literature, and the way it’s connected with the landscape. So the Yorkshire moors make you think of the Brontes, the Lake District means Wordsworth, Bath means Jane Austen, etc.
It’s also a relief to live in a country where you can walk the countryside without the fear of being bitten or stung by something dangerous.
Oh, and the architecture, especially in Bath, York, Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge, is often gorgeous.
Finally, the fact that the Prime Ministers are almost always Oxford-educated. British people should be grateful to live in a country whose leaders have been educated at the most famous University in the world. In a lot of countries, the leader is a semi-literate businessman or populist.
Dislikes:
Overcrowded. There are just too many people squeezed onto this little island.
Small, overpriced houses, all squashed together.
A feral, anti-social minority who ruin people’s lives. They are then encouraged to have lots of kids by the benefit system.
Self-loathing/lack of national pride. This alternates with outbursts of ugly nationalism, however, especially during football matches.
The Sun newspaper (a national embarrassment).
Awful politics. On the one side, sneering, sanctimonious left-wingers who hate Britain and hate its past, on the other, people who hold up an archaic class system and hereditary monarchy.