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.