Like everywhere, this island has major faults:
It's overcrowded
The houses are too small and expensive (and jammed on top of one another)
We don't get enough sun
We have the worst national anthem in the world
The royal family are an absolute embarrassment
But I do love some things. I love the countryside (what's left of it). And I love cities like Bath, York, Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, etc.
Above all, I love the cultural history, and the way that cultural history is woven into the landscape. You can't visit the Yorkshire moors without thinking of the Brontes or Ted Hughes. Bath means Jane Austen, the Lake District means Wordsworth, Canterbury means Chaucer, Stratford means Shakespeare, London means Dickens. Last time I was in London, I went for a stroll and found myself in Bloomsbury Square, where Virginia Woolf lived and wrote. That's the UK in a nutshell – you just stumble onto places of amazing cultural importance. Bill Bryson said that every square mile of Britain has some amazing historical event attached to it – some battle or scientific breakthrough or whatever – and it's so true. Every time I visit Cambridge, it thrills me to think that Milton, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Nabokov, Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell and many more all studied there, that this was the place in which DNA was discovered, where the atom was first understood, etc. I spent a week in Oxford last year, and saw the college where Oscar Wilde studied, and the pub in which Tolkien read the Lord of the Rings to C. S. Lewis.
I also feel deeply rooted here. For example, I watched Raging Bull, the Godfather and Goodfellas last weekend. All three are about Italian-American culture. They're great films, but when I watch them, I'm struck by how alien that culture feels to me. I have the same experience when I watch Woody Allen. Again, great films, but focused on Jewish New York culture. I dislike ugly, aggressive nationalism, but I'd be lying if I said my national identity means nothing to me. When I watch British films, like Lawrence of Arabia or Bridge on the River Kwai or Withnail and I, or whatever, I feel a warmth and connection that I don't feel when I watch The Godfather or Annie Hall. I certainly don't think we're superior to other nations or cultures. But human beings need roots. We need to know who we are. I always gravitate back to British literature and British films because that is my culture. At times I've fought against it, and wished to be a citizen of the world, but it doesn't work. I'm a Brit. It isn't a question of loving or hating Britain. It's who I am.