Tell me about the cultural touchstones that have shaped your sense of Englishness

[BornAtTheEndofBrightonPier]

Or Scottishness, Welshness or Northern Irishness, if you're from one of the other nations of the UK (I'd love to steal Under Milk Wood from the Welsh MNs, but I can't do that!)

I have a few:

• Squeezing myself headfirst through the hole in the Mên-an-Tol in Cornwall, while the woman whose garden it stood in assured me I’d be blessed with good health for the rest of my life. I think it was 1991, when I was five.
• Exploring Bronze Age tumuli (burial mounds)
• Turner paintings that capture movement and light
• Thomas Hardy's heroines, like Tess Durbeyfield and Bathsheba Everdene
• The excitement of being a child at the back of the car and driving through a ford
• Organ music in church (particularly when it's Bach)
• Georgian architecture of Bath
• David Hockney
• The novels of Graham Greene
• The 1948 film of Brighton Rock starring Richard Attenborough (I'm from Brighton, so this is an extra special one for me)
• The novels of Evelyn Waugh
• Paradise Lost by John Milton
• Watching the 1946 version of Great Expectations on Christmas Eve
• M. R. James's ghost stories
• Hadrian's Wall and Sycamore Gap (RIP 😢)
• Glastonbury Tor
• Noggin the Nog (the cartoon Viking, repeated on TV in the early 90s)
• Maid Marian (the kids' TV show)
• Narnia
• Swimming around the arch of Durdle Door
• The League of Gentlemen
• Alan Partridge (even though I can't stand SC)
• Folk rock like Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span
• The Beatles
• Roxy Music
• David Bowie
• "All the Young Dudes"
• All pubs with character, both town and country
• Just William stories
• Powell and Pressburger films
• Walking through Kemp Town in Brighton just as a sea fret rolls in
• The illustrations and stories of Beatrix Potter
• Beatrix Potter's house in Cumbria
• Brighton Museum and Art Gallery
• White horses carved into hillsides
• Wuthering Heights
• Lewes Bonfire Night
• The Burning of the Clocks in Brighton for the winter solstice
• The film Lawrence of Arabia

I couldn't sleep last night, and these came to mind. I'd love to hear other people's lists.

Pewsey?! We went there on holiday once, think it was around 2001. There's a statue of Alfred the Great at a roundabout and a really rough pub called the Smugglers.

Steam rallies and airshows.

Kite flying up Hay Bluff.

Eddie Stobart and his long distance lorry drivers.
Samuel Smith's pubs.
Use of cruet.
Victoria Wood.
Blackgang Chine on the Isle of Wight.
Cheddar Gorge.
Longleat.
Brian Sewell.
Quentin Crisp.
The Kendall Pencil Museum.
The Southport Lawnmower Museum.
Morrissey.

chorley cakes
black pudding
cheshire cheese

A little bowl of beer.

I love the Village Fair. I spend the day selling tea/coffee and cakes. DD1 spends ages on her competition entries. DD2 is iff with her friends. DH admires the Classic Cars.
Theres tradional races and Tug of War. A petting zoo. The dog show. Craft stalls. Then the auction of the overgrown vegetables.

Its sort of timeless.

Blackadder! How could I forget Blackadder? Rowan Atkinson was actually pretty good looking in Blackadder II and of course, Miranda Richardson as Queenie.

Blackadder Goes Forth. Absolute masterpiece. The ending!

God loads

English churches
english countryside
Very British arts
the very English imagination (bed Peter Ackroyd) that’s given rise to Newton and Blake
the English sense of humour
fish and chip shops
english pubs inc buying a round
folklore
ancient sites
our amazing history
Shakespeare, milton
Morris dancers
iron maiden
scrumpy
The royal family
dogs everywhere on a windswept beach
love of animals esp dogs
tolerance but a very robust pissed off threshold that once you cross it’s like a switch

Peter Sellers.

As a Scot: tattie scones, Burns Night, Hogmanay, Tunnocks, Lucky White Heather Show
And my north English side: Stottie, pease pudding, Viz, Sunderland FC
And my Welsh side: Welsh cakes, Glamorgan sausages, Tom Jones

tolerance but a very robust pissed off threshold that once you cross it’s like a switch

100% had this over the summer with my Italian mother in law 😂

Country/ village pubs, with dogs
London pubs, huge with high ceilings, engraved mirrors and wonderful tiles and woodwork
Seaside trips, funfairs, arcades, sandcastles, candy floss, etc
Ancient woodland
Alfresco Shakespeare by touring theatre companies
Music Festivals
Tea shops
Country fairs, with jousting, ferret and terrier racing, etc.
Old events like Padstow Mayday and Abbots Bromley
Rambling
Village fetes and events, with Morris dancing, dog shows, etc
Until it got madly woke, I would have said Radio 4
Snooker at the Crucible and the Ally Pally

Pewsey's in Wiltshire not Somerset.

My list -
The service of seven lessons and carols, preferably by candlelight
Allotments
Piers
Heritage steam railways
The last night of the proms
A cup of tea as a cure for anything
Thanking the bus driver
Crap stories in local newspapers "Mary grew a carrot that looks like Hitler"
Trestle table teas set up in the street to mark royal weddings
Sunday roasts
The NHS
The British concept of picnics i.e. egg sandwiches, tea from an enamel mug, anorak hood up, a tartan rug keeping you up off the pebbles in a force 10 gale.

Until it got madly woke, I would have said Radio 4

yeah me too :-(

I live in hope that it'll come back round again

Private Eye

• Hot and sweaty ceilidhs and as a child sleeping under coats at the back of the village hall
• Visiting Kilmartin Glen
• The feeling of excitement on the pier before you board a ferry to a Hebridean island for a windswept weekend away
• The smell of maltings
• The feeling of the reciprocal one raised finger steering wheel greeting on single track roads
• The expansive and grounding feeling swimming in the loch with the hills rising in front of you
• Impromptu fiddle or accordion music in the pub
• bramble picking in September with mum
• Anytime someone recites tam o’shanter off by heart at a burns supper

I am an atheist, but the King James Bible and Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer keep me in the fold. The language of the liturgy, and the buildings are powerful. And the sense of history. People have herded sheep across this landscape for a thousand years. Wool made Britain wealthy.

We went last year, it was my first time for a while but I saw them loads in the 80s/90s, it was such a treat to see them again. My MN name was originally a Fairport themed one.

Endless sport on the BBC
80s and 90s sitcoms
Enid Blyton books
My grandparents
England seaside holidays as a child
Grange Hill, Blue Peter, Byker Grove

@DorsetKnobBiscuit

Pewsey's in Wiltshire not Somerset.

Ah you're right. I was confusing it with Langport where we also.went on holiday and they had a similar vibe.

So

The music of Fairport Convention

Eating chips on the beach

Last Night of the Proms

Queueing politely at bus stops

Cups of tea

Cream tea at an NT property

Watching HIGNY (at the moment)

Great British films such as Brassed Off

Brass bands

Getting out the bunting for Royal weddings

Bomb scares.
Bombs going off.
British soldiers searching my mother’s shopping bags and dumping food on the ground and stamping on it and my mother crying trying to pick it up off the ground.
Police officers with guns searching us in shops.
Sorry to bring the happy tone down..

@BernardBlacksMolluscs Private Eye is fantastic. You either have to read every copy religiously or leave it alone for years. Even if you keep up with it, most of it is in code and requires a great amount of forehead scrunching.

I haven't bought it in ages but I never understood what that long running gag in the classified ads was, "Sous fifre" and, "Capitaine."

I think it was Hislop playing around or even Peter Cook whilst he was still alve.

If you ever want to see classic British comedy, find, "A Life In Pieces" with Peter as Sir Arthur Streeb - Greebling and Ludovic Kennedy playing it straight.

The Balinese fighting fish by airmail and the personalised light bulbs home enhancement programme were just perfection.

Hint: The Balinese fighting fish didn't like being sent through the post because it distressed them. The female fish ate the male fish and it wasn't anybody's fault that you got an empty envelope. Obviously the water dried out.

Likewise, the only two surnames that could be interested in the personalised light bulb scheme were Phillips and Osram.

Not Sir Arthur Streeb Greebling's fault!

The general public have such a lack of imagination and also, if they did get sucked in, better to lose a few tropical fish or a lightbulb than six thousand men on the Russian Front.

The shipping Forecast
the Tyne bridge
country churches
punch and judy
yorkshire pudding
are you mashing duck?
mushy peas and mint sauce

I’ve lived out of the UK for 25 years now. My children are citizens of another country. These lists have made me cry.

• Singing old hymns like 'I Vow to Thee My Country' at primary school (even though I'm Jewish!)
• Sitting by the Thames on my lunchbreak thinking how amazing it is that I'm looking over at a 1000-year-old fortress across the river (Tower of London)
• Walking around the City of London at the weekend with my dad when I was a kid - it used to be completely empty in the 80s and 90s
• Going into Kings College Cambridge with my dad and being able to take out a punt out on the Cam because he is a former 'Kingsman'
• Going with my parents into shops selling cigars and tweed caps and stuff like that on St James Street as a kid
• Walking past a parade of shops from multiple cultures is also somehow very English to me!
• Looking at the view from Westminster Bridge and thinking of Wordsworth's poem about it

Climbing up the cheese wring in Cornwall
Devils den in Wiltshire
Avebury - being able to just touch something so old
Looking round national trust gardens
Fish and chips in the car whilst it rains looking at the beach

Flower Fairy's books by Cecily Mary Barker
Searching for fairy's in the garden
Making potions/perfume from roses as a child
Entering horticultural society competitions to win 50p as a prize