With hundreds of books written and hundreds of millions sold, Enid Blyton is probably Britain’s best loved and most read author. Her writing may be considered dated and restricted, as well as occasionally racist and sexist, but you can be sure that more Britons have read her work for pleasure than have ever opened up those leather- bound Complete Works of Shakespeare (see shakespeare, william) that languish on so many shelves. The Noddy stories are still extremely popular in book form and on television (though now stripped of the golliwogs), but it is the Famous Five and Secret Seven series that are the archetypal Blyton books that we Brits have a fondness for. These promise adventure, secret hideaways, idyllic childhoods, swarthy strangers and lashings of ginger beer once the mystery is solved. Blyton claimed to have written entirely from her imagination, though if you consider the bizarrely fantastical content of some of her fantasy stories like Folk of the Faraway Tree alongside the fact that she wrote as many as 10,000 words per day then you could be forgiven for wondering what the hell she was putting in her tea.
Ostensibly a simple rowing race between two universities (see oxbridge), this contest somehow clambered its way up the roster of sporting events of national importance to sit alongside the Grand National and the FA Cup Finals and became a regularly televised spectacle. The first race between Cambridge and Oxford universities’ boat clubs was in 1829, with both teams being named ‘blues’ after the colour of their blood. The race is from Putney to Mortlake, which is 4 miles and 347 yards. The point of the race, for the general public at least, is that at least one of the boats should sink, though this has not happened in the actual race since 1978, when the light blues of Cambridge went under.
The dashing MI6/Secret Intelligence Service agent, created by writer Ian Fleming in 1952, was named after the author of a book about birds he happened to have at his Caribbean home. The first Bond novel was 1953’s Casino Royale, with the huge success of the series dictating that they be turned into films. The Bond film has been a hugely successful franchise since Sean Connery first starred in Dr. No in 1962, though Fleming himself saw actor David Niven as more the archetype of 007. Speculation over who the next actor to play Bond will be always makes for a large number of column inches in the press, with Daniel Craig being the current incumbent. Bond is known for his love of fast cars, fast women and nifty gadgets. The Aston Martin DB5 is the classic Bond car, though the luxury motor manufacturers have never thought to market a model with a working ejector seat. The Bond film is always a favourite on television at Christmas: their simple plots and the likelihood that they will be repeated mean that even the most inebriated, unconscious member of the family can follow the story-line.
Queen of the Iceni people in the east of England at the time of the Roman invasion, Boudica (or Boudicca or Boadicea) was one of the most fierce and fearless British women of all time: she was even scarier than a night out with Scary Spice, Pat Butcher and Anne Robinson. Boudica is famed for taking on the Roman forces and destroying Colchester, St Albans and the fledgling city of London, leading a rebel army in a fit of ransacking and destruction not seen on a similar scale until closing time on Oliver Reed’s stag night (see stag nights). Boudica was eventually defeated somewhere in the Midlands around 61 AD, though not before thousands on both sides had died. Fatalities are thought to have been fewer on Reed’s stag night, though no accurate records for casualties on either historic occasion are available.
For around 100 years from its invention in 1850, the bowler was the dominant British hat, transcending class headwear rules and leaving an enduring image of the Brit as bowler- hatted. The hard felt hat was designed by James and George Lock and manufactured by the Bowler family milliners for the Earl of Leicester. The Bowler was initially used as a riding hat, though it soon became popular with bankers and civil servants, offering a halfway house between the top hat and the flat cap. The Bowler was later adopted by some manual workers, who prized its protective raised dome. It has largely fallen out of fashion now, though it did enjoy a resurgence in the late 1960s, thanks to the film A Clockwork Orange. This brief revival was most confusing, as you couldn’t tell who was a slightly eccentric outmoded banker and who was a psychotic film fanatic bent on a bit of the old ultraviolence.
While the rest of the (Christian) world gets on with life as normal from about 5 pm on Christmas Day, we draw the whole thing out by adding Boxing Day on 26 December. The day is said to be when servants were given their ‘Christmas box’, usually some kind of bonus, by their employer, though its name may also be derived from this being the day when drunk or hungover members of the aristocracy were most likely to beat (or ‘box’) their charges. This tradition of fisticuffs on Boxing Day was continued by football fans, as the day saw local derby matches played between teams such as Liverpool and Everton as well as between Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur. Fans of these teams still have songs in their repertoire that boast ‘We shall fight for ever more, because of Boxing Day’. I am sure that some families would be only too willing to echo those sentiments.
THE BBC (BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION)
Depending on your opinion (and mine depends very much upon whether they want to option this book as the basis for some kind of ‘Best of British’ style show where C-list celebrities pretend to remember clips they have just been shown), the British Broadcasting Corporation is either a wonderful British institution, the pinnacle of broadcasting and worth every penny of the licence fee or an overblown money pit that taxes viewing, wastes budget on endless clip shows and is a propaganda machine for Britain’s politically correct liberal-left. The corporation was founded in 1922 by Lord John Reith and came into state ownership in 1927. Its mission statement slogan is ‘Nation shall speak unto nation in quite a posh accent’ (see queen’s english) and it is now responsible for a huge array of television channels, radio stations and internet sites across the globe. The BBC has been responsible for nearly all of Britain’s best-loved radio (see radio 4) and television programmes, as well as Noel’s House Party.
Re-enactment societies have long been popular in Britain, often re-staging battles between the Roundheads and Cavaliers or even the rival armies of World War II, though in 1997 it was a musical conflict that was re-enacted, with Britpop reliving the days when you had to choose between The Rolling Stones or The Beatles. Unfortunately, it all went a bit wrong when the media re-created the nonexistent battle of The Kinks against The Beatles between middle- class mockney band Blur and the faux Fab Four, portrayed by working class Mancunian monobrow merchants Oasis. Lots of Union Flags (see union flag) were waved, some other similar bands formed and took a large amount of cocaine, some stole bass lines from old punk bands, Tony Blair was elected and everyone got home in time for tea (see tea as a meal).
According to just about every poll ever taken, the Brussels sprout is Britain’s most hated vegetable, which is going some as we