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.

Carols from Kings
Clubs. If it's Tuesday you see members of the table tennis club all trotting along to the village hall with their bats in little cases. If it's Wednesday all the rock choir ladies are turning up in chattering groups.
Queues
The National Trust
To misquote @Echobelly, "Looking at the view from Waterloo Bridge and thinking of The Kinks about it"
Brilliant British women - Vivienne Westwood, Mary Portas, Prunella Scales, The old Queen to name but a few.
British films and TV shows

@BornAtTheEndofBrightonPier
Actually the British army were like the Houthis.
But as you were..

The Proms Season
Local cricket
Afternoon Tea
Fish and Chips at the seaside
Sunday roast
Sandwiches
The weather

Shabbat Shalom ❤️

Yes it's crazy how London has changed since the 1960s. In one of Michael Palin's diaries he wrote about he popped into town one day and parked his car outside Harrods. Different world back then.

You've reminded me of a story my dad told me of his dad taking him to the Prospect of Whitby pub as a kid in the mid-ish 1960s, exactly the time the Crays were in their pomp. And it was a really rough establishment and certainly not suitable for a young boy. It was an odd choice for my grandad who was a very straight-laced, respectable working class Catholic man who had no time for organised crime.

Sundays are a quaint essentially our ‘English’ day; church in our village parish church which still has the 1920s hymn book and every verse of every song including “all things bright and beautiful” is still sung (with gusto) and a rickety slightly out of tune organ, and a wonderful old peel of bells!
roast for lunch with all the trimmings.
walk in the afternoon come rain or shine
afternoon tea with Lapsang (earl grey during the week) and homemade fruit cake
homework for kids, house work / DIY for the adults
tv with sandwiches.
i reclaimed our Sundays a few years ago, as I felt we were all too busy, too stressed and not enough family time. I have no regrets and everyone is much happier and calmer. Sometimes the kids see their friends, but often they like just having one day a week which is family centred.

It’s brilliant isn’t it?!

It is so good. They were selling it in the gift shop at the museum of London a few years ago so I hope a few more people discovered it as a result.

The film adaptation was a bit of a disappointment, again with Richard Attenborough. Difficult one to transpose to the screen.

Balaclava wearing little toe rags on illegal motorbikes.

Is that George Eliot? I only know Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda.

Accepting diversity without banging on about bloody Maypole dancing etc.

I don't know what this means?

I don’t know what this means.

I have another one that is slightly left field.

There is a War Memorial in Murmansk, Russia, dedicated to the combined efforts of Britain and the Soviet Union during WWII, specifically the Arctic Convoys that carried vital supplies to the USSR under the Lend-Lease programme. My grandfather was on that mission on HMS Belfast. Absolutely terrifying. He was onboard during the battle of the North Cape.

I spent my 21st Birthday there, the most northerly city in Russia above the artic circle , when I lived in Russia as a student (Russian Language graduate). It felt particularly special to spend such a milestone birthday in a place so closely connected to my grandfather’s wartime experiences.

Can you tell us what you mean, maypoles are not that ubiquitous on the thread, I think only two PP have mentioned them, and I've never encountered one ove the courts of my life (I'm almost 40)

George Eliot: writer and early Zionist 💙🤍

Northern friendliness
“what ya had where ya from”

The dark satanic mills
Northern grit and pride
Bury Black pudding in grece proof paper

Acid house and the hacienda, Sankeys and Home.

This

m.youtube.com/watch?v=PszMmYpQjPo&ra=m

Going to see the Blackpool illuminations on a coach trip from my home town. Coach trips in general! Craft fairs in Buxton. Driving through green forests where the trees hang over like an archway. Maypole dancing. Singing hymns in school assembly and all of us getting told off for singing 'while shepherds washed their socks...' Terraced houses with shared yards and ginnels. Roast dinners. Going to Harrods for a super special treat when visiting my dad in London. Corner shops where you know the owners. Feeling cosy when someone has my home accent. Calling all my mum's friends 'aunty' and 'uncle' and my friends parents 'Mr/Mrs X'. Pubs. Talking to my neighbours about the weather and local comings and goings. I love where I live and where I grew up even though they are far apart.

Salford pride:
Chapple st Salford the street that lit the world!
Tony Wilson
Salford lads club
First public library
First care home
Lance Burn clean air act
First canal Bridgewater

Shakespeare.
Ponds with ducks
Dickens
The Thames
Happy Eater
Primroses in lanes
London schoolkids comparing trainers at bus stop
Pork pie - miniature obv

Fish and chips
Sunday roast
Slot machines in Cleethorpes (Caravan holidays in Cleethorpes generally)
My late nan decked out in her finest in the early 90s going to the local club to watch a turn.
Being off school sick watching Richard and Judy on This Morning.
Countdown

The appreciation of a queue.
Warm beer and dogs in the pub with a big fire (fuck off Farage, this is not just your thing).
Our appreciation of certain humour, toilet and anatomical.
Not boasting, instead being understated.
An amazing sense of history.
Cynicism.
Unrivalled drinking ability.
Kindness and tolerance, though this is being drained at the moment sadly.
General manners and courtesy, saying sorry if someone treads on your foot.

And he painted matchstalk men and matchstalk cats and dogs
He painted kids on the corner of the street with the sparking clogs
Now he takes his brush and he waits outside them factory gates
To paint his matchstalk men and matchstalk cats and dogs