In recent years,
Telegraph Travel
has consistently pointed out numerous instances where other nations surpass Britain.
Germany's rail system is more dependable.
(considering recent issues), and its autobahns significantly outshine our motorways.
France's villages possess greater vitality.
, with its waitstaff (although they can be somewhat haughty) being far more capable.
Greek cuisine is healthier
, with its people being more hospitable.
Americans are more patriotic
, and their national parks utterly outshine our own.
However, there are numerous reasons for Britons to feel proud. Below are merely 10 examples (along with some additional "honourable mentions"). Feel free to share your own thoughts or contest our selections in the comments section.
1. Temperateness
Should one observe from inside Britain at present, it could appear that the nation is currently on the
highway to hell
– The NHS on life support, issues with drugs, crime, taxation, gender uncertainties, controversies surrounding Prince Andrew, plus whatever else might be brewing – viewed from afar, these challenges may not fully capture the situation. Those who aren’t immersed in the day-to-day affairs of the UK perceive a more enduring truth. Part of this underlying essence, which defines British character, could be described as "moderation." This trait sets us apart globally; it's truly exceptional.
Britain, for the most part, is not a country known for extravagance. Even so,
present crop of outrages
, we continue to be a model of restraint, commendably calm in terms of climate (free from hurricanes), topography (no peak exceeds 1,345 meters, insignificant compared to Alpine standards) and politics (from Sunak to Starmer without a single gunshot being heard).
For generations, we haven't experienced revolutions or significant civil unrest. Our history is so steeped in peace and stability that debates over cycle lanes can stir great anger among us. Meanwhile, elsewhere, fundamental disputes might be settled—or left unresolved—with extreme measures like flamethrowers or brick-throwing confrontations with law enforcement. In contrast, Brits prefer settling down with a nice cup of tea or perhaps a glass of wine. Instead of outrage stemming from issues such as corruption, suppression, or government violence, ours often comes from simply watching the week’s sports results.
Strictly
.
This sense of calm allows us to be courteous, casual, generally hospitable, modest in our mannerisms which others often fail to understand, largely accepting, kind-hearted... and yes, humorous about pretty much anything. On this balanced foundation, we excel at producing and embracing world-class brilliance in various areas: rock 'n' roll, fashion, football to mention only a few. While they're partying up top, the vessel stays unshaken below decks.
Anthony Peregrine
2. Ordnance Survey maps
Don't simply rely on me. Back in the late 18th century, when the military Board of Ordnance embarked on their mission to produce comprehensive and precise maps of Great Britain, their aim was to create something that would serve as "the pride of the nation." Mission accomplished.
Ordnance Survey maps
are indeed objects of sublime beauty.
Indeed, these may have initially been employed by military personnel, yet today they serve as essential tools for everyone eager to discover various parts of the nation. These maps depict windmills alongside industrial areas, distinguish between bracken and barren land, highlight old earthworks, and chart each place of worship. Moreover, they guide you through routes like footpaths, bridleways, and byways that crisscross within their grid sections. Far from mere maps, they represent boundless opportunities.
Sarah Baxter
3. Pubs
Bars. Rum shacks.
Chiringuitos
. Tasting rooms. Karaoke lounges. They all have their place (well, maybe not the last one), but they’re not
pubs
, are they?
That’s because the classic British boozer is as unexportable as black pudding or Alan Carr, and it simply can’t be replicated in laboratory conditions.
Sure, you could collect the ingredients – warm beer, bad wine, a cocktail list that consists of G&T or JD & Coke? Check. Stale-smelling carpets, wobbly tables, a sink in the toilets that makes you want to wash your hands after washing your hands in? Check. Indifferent staff, vaguely threatening customers and a dog? Check. But throw them together and you don’t get a pub, you get a ghoulish Frankenstein’s-monster mockery (like, say,
the Churchill
, “New York’s finest English Tavern” – which gets things so badly wrong that it proudly hosts baby showers and children’s parties…).
No, a proper pub needs all those elements (plus, obviously, a cribbage board); but, like a well-poured pint of stout, it must be left to settle: 200-odd years should do it. Then (slightly thirsty perhaps), creak open the door to find yourself in the cosiest and most convivial place on earth, where the conversation and the laughter and the log fire crackle like the pork scratchings. Welcome home; mine’s a foaming tankard of nut-brown ale please.
Ed Grenby
4. Music
Yes, fair enough, New York has thrown out the odd decent band. And Los Angeles used to do a really nice line in preposterously coiffured men whose collective hairspray use was largely responsible for the the hole in the ozone layer (and whose songs seemed to bring on severe cases of constipation, so pained were their facial expressions as they “ripped” into yet another endless widdly-widdly guitar solo).
However, the truth is that you can virtually pinpoint any spot on the British map, and a
brilliant musical act
By now, figures from these cities would have surfaced over the last seven decades. Manchester, London, and Glasgow remain an unending vortex of musical innovation. For most of the Nineties, Bristol stood as the heartland of trip-hop allure (it might reclaim this status once more should Massive Attack drop another record). Oxford discarded its academic robes to introduce us to Radiohead. Meanwhile, Liverpool spawned a group of young men who achieved considerable success in the Sixties; unfortunately, I can’t recall their names just now.
However, consider this: If the quiet suburbs of Bromley — Bromley! — could nurture the formative years of an icon as innovative, progressive, and constantly evolving as David Bowie, then the argument concludes immediately. End of story.
Chris Leadbeater
5. Eccentricity
Sure, Japan has toilet-themed cafés and Iceland a museum of ancient phalluses, but which other nation’s inhabitants roll peas, snorkel through bogs, or dance around each other while trying to avoid being hit by a beer-soaked cloth (dwile-flonking, anyone?), in the name of entertainment?
Attribute it to our insular mindset or perhaps due to those wet days spent indoors assembling Airfix models, but British people excel at eccentricity with unparalleled zest.
The best part is that everything here can be appreciated casually. Whether you're visiting quirky places like the Pencil Museum in Keswick, the Dog Collar Museum located surprisingly in Kent near Leeds Castle, or the Phone Box Museum in Cardigan; or attending eccentric events such as Worm charming in Blackawton, Aberdeenshire’s Fireball Whirling festival, or the renowned cheese-rolling event in Gloucestershire – these attractions form an ode to what makes humanity wonderfully peculiar. Speaking of which, who took off with my kneebells - did some dwile-flonking go wrong perhaps?
Sally Howard
6. Non-league football
Could anything be more delightful in life than holding your hands near a steaming mug of hot Bovril, with a thick woollen scarf wrapped around your neck, yelling 'whey' as the goalie kicks a dirty football from inside the stadium right into an adjacent garden? I very much doubt it.
When friends abroad ask me for recommendations on things to do in Britain, attending a non-league football game often tops my list. With roughly 1,000 non-league clubs spread throughout England, Wales, and Scotland, it’s at these small stadiums that you’ll experience the true essence of grassroots football.
true spirit of football
.
What makes non-league special is that it’s generally cheap, family-friendly (many have raffles) and home and away fans mingle in a jovial atmosphere, all to the tune of drums and witty chants. Many non-league teams retain the man-and-his-dog vibe, but some are ushering in a new era – Forest Green Rovers is the world’s first vegan football club, and Lewes FC pays its women the same as its men.
In many ways, the quality of the football is neither here nor there, although the prospect that Havant & Waterlooville could one day end up playing at the Etihad Stadium in the FA Cup is part of the magic. That, and the thrill that a misfired ball could whack your Bovril from your hand at any second.
Greg Dickinson
7. Museums
You might get some pushback from fans of the Hermitage, the Louvre, the Prado and the Met when it comes to a ranking of world-class museums, but overall, not only does Britain have institutions to rival all these, but the best ones are free to all-comers. And, putting all the
recent controversies
about restitution aside, that fundamental principle of making the greatest artefacts and works of art freely available to all is at the heart of what shapes our national sense of the importance of visual culture.
It is deeply ingrained in our history. Twenty years ago we were celebrating the 250th anniversary of the British Museum, this year it’s the bicentenary of the National Gallery. And let’s not forget the wonderful National Gallery in Edinburgh – it marks the 175th year of its foundation in 2025, while the V&A will reach the same milestone two years later.
And these great institutions have a star-studded supporting cast. In London alone we have world-class museums in both the Tate Modern and Tate Britain, the National Portrait Gallery, the Natural History and Science museums, the Wallace Collection and Kenwood House (all free). And while the Courtauld Gallery and Dulwich Picture Gallery (which opened in 1817 and is the oldest public art gallery in England) do charge, they also have fabulous collections that are more than worth the admission cost.
Nick Trend
8. Sense of humour
I imagine having a sense of humor is essential in this country nowadays, wouldn’t you say? Maybe no place embodies our downtrodden yet droll sensibility better than Ilkeston, the somewhat shabby town in Derbyshire.
whose highest-ranked attraction is a gap in the fence
Satirical rave reviews on TripAdvisor serve as a sardonic commentary on urban decay. "This is characteristic of our local wit," explained a resident, gesturing towards a traffic circle adorned with gnomes as an additional instance.
Similar to how different cheeses vary from region to region, each area often has its distinct brand of humor. In St Agnes, Cornwall,
Locals enthusiastically shared with me information about the yearly Tour de Pissing.
, a boozy fancy dress bike race between pubs. In Gloucestershire, the local humour felt similarly dangerous as
I joined others chasing a wheel of cheese down Cooper’s Hill
.
An ex-winner told me that he didn’t even like double Gloucester while showing me a video of him being knocked unconscious during a previous event. “We thought he was dead,” laughed his mate. Someone did snap their ankle during my race. “This is what it means to be British,” a spectator declared as the poor bloke was stretchered away. God help us.
In nearby Wales, they snorkel in bogs for laughs, while Edinburgh devotes itself to comedy every August. The funniest Fringe joke is hotly anticipated. “I was going to sail around the globe in the world’s smallest ship but I bottled it” being this year’s winner.
Gavin Haines
9. Parish churches
It's pouring rain in this small rural town. The only store around is a Spar. The local pub shut down half a decade ago. Buses run just once daily for four days each week. Given these circumstances, what can one do here? Often, the finest response involves passing through a lychgate—the ceremonial gateway leading into hallowed ground—and meandering along the pathway towards the church entrance via the cemetery. Discovering an unlocked church provides immediate comfort but soon leads to more profound feelings. In numerous areas where public houses and postal offices, stores and essential services have vanished, parish churches have become increasingly significant.
Free to enter, focused on anything but consuming, and gloriously unsurveilled, they are survivors from a lost world. Their Gothic and perpendicular exteriors give a village something monumental, a witness to centuries and communities. Their interiors – the whiff of damp or incense, the glint of silver, the creaky pews – are, for some, a
flashback to childhood
, Confirmation and Sunday School.
Many people, in the “matting, seats, and stone, and little books”, find themselves feeling like Philip Larkin in “Church Going”: wondering, at a loss, awkwardly reverent.
It is an extraordinary gift to humanity in a clamorous and phone-twitching world to provide a safe, dry, special, almost magical, space in which to spend half an hour.
Our old parish churches pip so much other heritage and allow a solemn silence often impossible in great city cathedrals. Without them, British villages would be ghostly and quite hopeless, unworthy of the visitor’s patience and time.
Chris Moss
10. Plugs
Sitting under my desk is a grim little Tupperware box, full of the saddest souvenirs of world travel. Travel adaptors are often the last thing I pack before setting off overseas – unlike sunglasses or swimming trunks, packing them comes with no foretaste of fun. I have a small alphabet’s worth of the things – the two-pronged Europe Type Es that droop out of sockets: the American Type Bs that – considered from one particular angle – look like a disappointed face.
Everything makes me yearn for the British Type G plug, often deemed by electricians I've consulted as one of the finest globally due to its reliability and safety features. However, it’s worth noting that these aren’t solely found in the UK. A few years back, when I needed to recharge my toothbrush in Kuala Lumpur, I looked for a socket, spotted an old acquaintance up above the baseboard, and instantly felt connected to home.
Oli Smith
Honourable mentions
What else do we excel at compared to the rest of the globe? Perhaps our amusingly named places take the cake (hello Nether Wallop, Great Snoring, Crackpot, and Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch). Or maybe it’s our love for quizzes, like those popular Monday night challenges.
Mastermind
,
Only Connect
and
University Challenge
To those hosted in pubs across the country – or on Zoom during the pandemic.
There’s our monarchy, complete with all the grand ceremony (we won’t believe you weren’t touched by the King’s Coronation, which featured Armed Penny Mordaunt and the evocative melodies of Handel’s).
Zadok the Priest
). Our capacity to create sports and subsequently
fail to win at them
(snooker and darts excluded) is unrivalled. We’ve also perfected the art of afternoon tea – and of cooked breakfasts. And then there’s our mighty castles, our quaint villages, our dry stone walls, our hedges, our garden centres, our roundabouts, our cheeses…
Recommended
10 great British pubs worth travelling for
Read more
Enjoy The Telegraph’s fantastic selection of Puzzles – getting smarter daily feels effortless. Sharpen your mind and enhance your spirits with PlusWord, the Petite Crossword, the challenging Killer Sudoku, and yes, even the traditional Cryptic Crossword.
1. 아침 식사
