What is British culture?

[SenoraPostrophe]

I've been asked to teach an English course (hooray - programming gets boring sometimes) which includes a section on "British culture".

Obviously I could throw a few ideas together myself, but it is quite an interesting question and I'm sure I'd miss something.

Ideas so far:

dry, Self-depreciating humour
Dinner parties (the Spanish don't do them - they meet up in restaurants, kids and all, instead)
Fish and chips
Toad in the hole
Sticky toffee pudding
Christmas pudding
custard
Kids getting up at 5am christmas day (don't do that here either - me and dd were the only ones awake in the whole street at 8am last year)
pubs
pub quizzes
culturally adventurous (Rock n roll and hip hop only became mainstream in the US after they were in the UK. Don't know if that's because the US is culturally conservative or racist).
Shakespeare
tea
chocolate digestives
Branston (mmm Branston)
Stilton

....that's it so far. Can you tell I haven't had tea yet?

also as an aside, the students will be TV execs who want to be able to talk to their counterparts at British stations. What do TV execs talk about?

Marius Goring's scenery-chewing turn as the ballerina's "composer" boyfriend would make even our fearless Cam very, very, very frightened indeed. Were you taken to see it on the basis that it would be a pretty film about The Ballet with that adorable Moira Shearer in it Cam?

this thread's v. interesting! Only last night I overheard a little jingly ditty coming from the TV in the next room and my immediate thought was 'there's something really fundamentally british about that tune'. It was a bit like a sitcom theme tune, sort of cheery and sort of modest, bit puerile, catchy...

are these yer British qualities?

It was the Benecol advert btw!

Lol that I was taken to see The Red Shoes (1948) Marina - even I'm not that old!!

No, I saw it on telly but at a very young impressionable age.

Cam, I assumed it was a re-release darling

The UK ability to queue - and seemingly in a much better natured way then mnay culture in western society.

Oh and has anyone mentioned - a proper cup of tea? Made in a warmed pot, with boiling water added on top of the tea bag? And served with milk, and preferably a biscuit as well. Why do other countries not get this and bring out water that is no longer boiling and then you have to add your own tea bag? You can't make a proper cup of te like that!!!!

Afternoon tea is a British culture thing too isn't it? When you go to countries which were once part of the British Empire they still follow rituals like afternoon tea - with tea and coffee, and little scones, cakes petit fours, etc. And sandwicches cut into quarters with crusts cut off.

I was just teasing you Marina [where is the teasing emotijob?] Hope your school fete went well!

I was being completely deafened by a queue of teeny hooligans for Santa's Grotty, Cam
So I think I may have misheard you, are you feeling better now? My good wishes for a "lovely time" might have not been quite what was needed if you had flu!

Oh no you were spot on Marina, thank you, I did get myself over to the Brighton meet and it cured me completely (alcohol does kills germs) and of course all the laughter helped too!

Dh says that he found all the Powell and Pressburger films scary

Kathleen Byron's MAD eyes and daubed lipstick in Black Narcissus? The whole plot and atmosphere of A Canterbury Tales...I'm not surprised Cam. Glad you made it, nothing like a Mumsnet meet-up for banishing grot and woe

How about the Jane Austen era? Something that seems very Brisish, or even English, about that.

deteriorating fast

DH is French and a favourite topic of conversation is the failings of British culture and society, and the superiorities of the French system (public transport, public health, food...). However he does agree that the British do three things better: queues, public toilets, and political journalism.

Then again there are some things that would have summed it up...once

The Kinks
The Who
The Rolling Stones
The Small Faces

and they all did it so well, iwish I was young again but twenty years previous!!

I'll have to support marsuphusband here

actually I was saying to a French friend the other day how I think the French and British are actually very similar, and that is why there is so much animosity between us:

• we both think we should rule the world ()
• cultural snobbery
• lots of expressions in common (more than between Spanish and English, I think)
• tendency to rewrite history....

Also, Marsup, remember the French do these things better too: humourless "preservation" of the language; strikes ; political corruption scandals!

Sounds like DH's comment about Oxford and Cambridge - they are completey different from each other, except that they are more like each other than they are like anywhere else.

... oh and I forgot:

• horse racing
• insulting the other being a national sport (well it is in Britain anyway - is it in France?)