Everything I know about Britain has come from the documentary series “Little Britain.”
Britain is a very silly place.
[Generalized statement based on movies, BBC imports and no first-hand experience.] I love the Brits, I would like to be one myself. I was planning on trying to finagle a career-plan to take me there, but my impression is that the unemployment was higher there than in the US and I wouldn’t want to take any jobs away from the True Brits. [/Generalization]
What do I like?
[ul]
[li]Accents (from north to south)[/li][li]Humor (from Python to Gervais)[/li][li]MINI Cooper (granted, I have one now, but still…)[/li][li]Morgan Motors[/li][li]The weird semi-bias against Gingers (being an ardent admirer of redheads myself; I figure: great! all the more for me!!!)[/li][li]Being just a hop, skip & a jump from the European peninsula[/li][li]Awesome comic-book talent! Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis, Mark Millar, Bryan Hitch, Trevor Hairsine[/li][li]Contributions to music, including Elvis Costello, Pink Floyd, Clapton, Kinks, Stones, Beatles[/li][li]Brit heist flicks, from the (original) Italian Job to Lock, Stock & 2 Smoking Barrels[/li][li]And quite honestly, not so much of the nationalistic “We’re the boss of everyone-attitude” which is… ah… a little bit more prevalent stateside. [/li][/ul]
Forgot:
[ul]
[li]Ardman Animation![/li][/ul]
I think England and the English are fantastic, I love your history. Ivyboy came back from a month in England with an appreciation for tea and a love for the Britiish Museum.
I love you guys.
No. I look at the United States, Canada, Australia etc…as the progeny of Britain. To me, the sun has never set on the British Empire.
If it wasn’t for Winston Churchill and the people that believed in him the world would be a different place. GB played a significant role in the Cold War.
Not relevant, don’t care.
Not even close.
We bulldoze over anything that’s 50 years or older. If you don’t want your cute, olde worlde stuff please send it here including your double deck busses and red phone booths.
OK, I like French cuisine, guillotine me. Oh, and I would kill for a good fish and chips dinner. The closest thing to it was Arthur Treachers but they left my area 30 years ago.
Not sure how to answer this. Do you think we’re missing something?
No. Not as long as you continue to advance in the sciences and humanities.
On the evening of 9/11 The news showed a band playing the Stars and Stripe at Buckingham Palace. Tears welled up in my eyes and I will never forget that.
From my perspective, British culture, customs, and law make up the foundation of who we are as Americans. Everything down to our work ethic comes from England. When you look at the human achievement in the last century it is nothing short of a monument to the British Empire.
I forgot to mention the humor. I sometimes regret I didn’t attempt to forge an academic career in English Lit., because I’d love to have specialized in humor. I think there’s a common thread to be found that runs all the way from Wodehouse through Monty Python and writers like Frank Parkin.
I must say, you’re all being jolly nice, don’tcha think, chowder? I didn’t expect such positivity when you started the thread. There are some great things about this country, but I suspect you’re ignoring a lot of the shit aspects.
You really, really haven’t met enough of us yet. Plenty of wankers here!
Good observation. Sadly, most Brits, too, are unaware of its brilliance until it moves to TV. Only us Radio 4 addicts realise it’s there.
It would only have been Quixotic if we were unlikely to defeat them. As it happened, we whupped their arses (though back then we didn’t feel the need to invade the entire country and depose the government - nature took its course following the defeat, a lesson that could be learned today). I’m disappointed that this adventure gained respect, though, even though these days I’m less disgusted with the affair than I was at the time.
WTF?!
In our darkest hour, Britain sent us The Beatles. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Hu. Well, this has been interesting. I thought the British were pretty much universally loved by Americans; I mean your accent alone would redeem any negative qualities, right? Plus you have (collectively) a great sense of humor. I like you guys, anyway.
I forgot to mention the music. Thank you England for the Music. The British Invasion is my favorite music by far. Thank you for Monty Python.
I am a big time Anglophile. I love all things British and seriously wish I was one.
My only visit there to date was a week or so in 2002 and also found everyone I encountered to be damn cool. I especially love the sense of humor shared by a lot of people I met- I would call it “sarcastic” but that isn’t really right, b/c sarcastic has a negative connotation. I guess you could say sarcastic, but in a fun, no offense intended way. Can’t really explain it. Bus drivers, museum aides and the like were really friendly and cool, and the one time when I was expecting an incident (I accidentally stepped on a teenage guys foot on the bus, and the guy was with a group of two or three other teens) I was met with a “sorry mate”- how cool is that!! Here in the states I would have probably gotten a beating, or a cussing out.
This is getting cloying.
Bloody limeys with their snooty attitudes and oh-so-proper accents! What’s the deal with not pronouncing the letter “R”? Huh? What’s up with that? “Fow BBC news, I’m Cawoll Witchawds in Austwalia”
Supernanny? 2nd most annoying woman on American TV right now and she claims to be Bwitish.
Bunch of damn socialists, with their health care and football hooligans.
(I’ll take it all back for some clotted cream)
What do I think of the British? Oh, I’ll tell you what I think of the British!
Seriously though, I am with pretty much all the rest of the non-Brit posters here. Love the accents, literature, humor, etc. Plus I really envy the sense of history that the British enjoy. Over here we can really only draw on a little over two hundred years before we start borrowing from Europe.
Oh, almost forgot Borat and Bruno, two of the most hysterical characters EVER.
Another Anglophile checking in here.
About ten years ago I first got to know someone from England. Joan has lived in the U.S. for forty years or more, but has not (I am told) lost a single drop of her Yorkshire accent, let alone her all-pervasive Englishness. At eighty-five she is prim, proper, and has more steel in her spine than the Terminator. She survived the Blitz, no doubt in that unmistakedly English fashion – “I say, Jerry’s laying it on rather thick tonight, what ho?” After speaking to this magnificent grand dame for an hour, another guest at the same party asked me what I’d thought of her. I’m not in the habit of quoting myself, but my reply was regarded as somewhat legendary: “Now I know why England has only been conquered twice in more than 2,000 years.”
When it comes to the arts, I have a foot strongly in the English camp. I’ve been performing in Gilbert & Sullivan operettas for many years, and have a soft spot for Shakespeare (though I never gotten a chance to perform it, more’s the pity). Quite a few of my favorite writers are English, from one age or another – The Ol’ Spear Shaker, of course, Frederick Forsyth, Ken Follett, Agatha Christie, Oscar Wilde, W.S. Gilbert. I have a growing collection of BBC videos, mostly of miniseries such as Pride & Prejudice, Ivanhoe, and Horatio Hornblower I have MP & the Holy Grail as well as the soundrack to Spamalot pretty much memorized. Not to mention most of Eddie Izzard’s routines.
Maybe it was the multiple viewings of My Fair Lady while I was growing up, but I’ve always been irrevocably infatuated with English accents (as well as Scottish, Irish, Aussie, etc). Even a broad cockney voice operates as beer goggles on me…she can look like Camilla – hell, she can look like Charles! – and I won’t care a tinker’s cuss as long she keeps talking. Raaawrrrr.
As to the relationship between England and the U.S. – well, others have summed it up nicely. England has been, and continues to be our staunchest ally. We may be the rebellious child who demanded emancipation rather than continuing to pay rent to papa – I mean His Majesty – but our national identity is, at the core more English than anything else. Why is it that Americans are fascinated with British royalty but don’t have the slightest bit of interest in or knowledge of royal families elsewhere? (The King of Spain? I thought that was just a song by Moxy Früvous.)
Miserable nitpick after all that: Oscar Wilde was Irish.
Further nitpick: why didn’t I meet any of these alleged anglophile women while I was living in Connecticut?
Damn! I yanked Sir Walter Scott off the list for being Scottish, then overlooked the Wildeman in my purge.
I’ll take my punishment without complaint.
American anglophilia is weakest in and around New England (oh, the irony), but increases as you move to points south and west.
Do you view us as being a tad insignificant in the great scheme of things.
Just the opposite; you’re a middleweight power and will continue to be. Most of the rest of western Europe is on the train to irrelevance.
A people who are insular and unfriendly.
Not at all. Sometimes a bit stiff, but no worse than a WASPy American
Just a place with lots of cute olde worlde monuments, cobbled streets, dark satanic mills, dreaming spires.
Nope. Though those are some good points.
A country full of restaurants serving lousy food (again no longer true)
Yes, though I quickly admit I know only what I read
Is there anything we have that you would like to see in America.
No, but that doesn’t mean I think ill of anything; one can admire and esteem without envying.
Are we just a country that has shot its bolt.
Just the opposite. While you are clearly not what you were in 1880, you seem to have a realistic appraisal about who you are and what you still have to give to the world. Contrast that to France, which is still cynically trying to find ways to recapture its lost importance.
Next to the Aussies, the UK is America’s best friend in the world.
If I had to leave the US, I’d pick the UK over anywhere else.
I’ve never met a Brit I didn’t personally like, provided he was sober. (I have met some sodden Scots…)
I think of the horror of Ypres and of this guy, perhaps the most perfect aristocratic facial expression since Cardinal Richelieu a few centuries earlier.
I also understood where Chowder was coming from… and understood that s/he would get a lot of hell for saying it in the manner in which it was said.
Anybody who thinks that England is a “tad insignificant in the grand scheme of things” has no concept of historical development, particularly of the past 300 years.