What is British Culture?

[bancodegaia]

I have a 40 minute presentation to deliver next week and I've just been handed the title of it - "British Culture", my question is... what is British Culture? I'm looking at what defines British and Culture. I think I'll look at the influence of each of the countries in Britain, the different groups of people living in Britain. I'll also look at the influences of food, music, sport and religion and how they affect culture.....

Thanks for any answers.

[Laurinha]

I've seen more culture in a petri-dish!  Good luck.

[sophie_1003]

influence of the countries= Welsh gave us cheese on toast and sheep, Scotland gave us, well not much, they're kind of on their own, Ireland gave us Guinness and shamrocks and leprecauns (not spelt right), and England is well, I'm assuming you're not from England?

We're kind of strange, we like crisp sandwiches, Marmite and we get excited by the prospect of a cup of tea and some biscuits. Our national heroes are David Beckham and Freddie Flintoff, Richard and Judy are probably the most loved couple. As for "No sex please we're British" that's a complete pile of codswallop, we have the highest teen pregnancy rate in Europe and we're kind of ironically proud of it. Most people still think of Britain as "Great" when really it's quite small with little influence over even it's own citizens.

As for food our major input is a Sunday dinner, which isn't always eaten on Sunday's and is usually eaten at lunchtime. This is the English side of things anyway. If you look at Britain you will see we are a very multicultural society so our favourite food is invariably indian or chinese takeaway.

Sports: we were good at football around 30 years ago! but now we're not so good. Rugby we were good at a couple of years a go but again we have gone down hill. Cricket, well we won the Ashes so I suppose thats good.

Religion: various, Christianity is the official religion but there are also many Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs and others but when asked on the census a few years a go, most people wrote "Jedi"

Culture: see above really

[VINNY100_2]

Try this site bancodegaia,

here.

Laurinha.your answer is as shallow as your petra-dish!!

[ursula62]

I saw a lovely poster outside a pub in Holborn

"Traditional British Grub served daily:
Lasagne
Baguettes
Chicken Tikka Masala
Scampi
Spaghetti Bolognese
Chilli Con Carne and Rice
Sizzling Fajitas".

Not one traditional piece of British cuisine on the list!

[jno]

lol ursula - pub having a bit of a joke there maybe. I suspect that's more London culture, though, very international and cosmopolitan; British as a whole is less so. I think of British culture as slightly inward looking (same as most other countries), but it has given the world most sports, which is interesting. Music definitely (1960s especially), food less so, I would have thought.

[Laurinha]

Thanks VINNY

[saffstar]

Right-o, as sophie_1003's got England covered, I'll do Wales:

Positive contributions:

• We genuinely are good at singing, considering there's less than 3 million of us, we certainly punch above our weight in the music industry (David Gray, Jem, Stereophonics, Charlotte Church, Funeral for a Friend, The Lost Prophets etc)
• Talking of punching, Britain's current best boxer (Joe Calzaghe) is Welsh
• Our national anthem kicks arse
• We're good at rugby again (hoorah!)
• We've got a brilliant sense of humour (we're even starting to learn to laugh at ourselves!).  If you ever see a book called 'Welsh Valleys Humour', by David Jandrell - with a foreward by Ronnie Barker, read it - it'll tell you pretty much all you need to know about us.
• Contrary to popular belief (and what the odd moron extremist would have you believe) we love anyone who comes to live here who actually wants to live in Wales and join our communities, and hasn't just come here thinking it's a little Salford.
• We've got the best stadium in Britain
• Dylan Thomas 

Negative contributions

• We're s**te at football (although this is probably a great thing for the other home nations
• 40% of Steps were Welsh (sorry about that)      

Plus: We were once hugely religious, but this has waned even more significantly in Wales than in the rest of the UK over the last 100 years and we did invent cheese on toast and sheep (kind of!)

[bancodegaia]

Thanks for the answers so far, one of the things I am going to highlight is the way British culture has assimilated bits of other cultures as highlighted excellently by Ursula62 - curry dishes are more popular than the Sunday roast.....

Sophie, I'm from England, I'm looking for other peoples views of what our culture is .

Saffstar - cheese on toast is up there with the locomotive engine as one of the all time great inventions- what a contribution to our culture!

[Peter Pedant]

Hi B

I dont think you have even started....

Lit - Shakespeare, King James bible

S amd Marlow are contemporaries of Lopez de vega by the way.

Art - Rubens, Lely,

portraiture - hoppner, gainsborough,

conversations pieces

No real court art movement as opposed to Velasquez

 

No real baroque period of religious art cf Zurbaran because the Chruch did not have the power /moneythat it did in Spain

Architecture - protestant churches had to follow the changes in ritual worship  - the form of the prayer book is set by Act of parliament - and this onvolved various changes in design. this is not reflected by RC religiion where they had the Council of trent 1555 and then that was it until Vatican II in 1962 !

music - complete failure - nothing between Handel 1700 and britten 1960

Poesy - oh God you can work it out -you can see what i was doing - ppicking a british subject and seeing what they were doing in Spain at the time..

Oh! Intellect - Church never supported universities and so 1) there was no collapse of universities 1680 - 1700

as there was in Spain when 45 universisites were reduced to 17 (or something) when the S American gold ran out

AND - the lack of church control allowed the scientific expansion 1680 -1700 - newton and so on - to occur in England.

 

Oh and dont forget - in 1780 the k of S Philip V nationalised all the documents relating to S america and shoved them in la libreria de las indias

so there is much better documentation of the sp imperial age than there was of England....

 

Good Luck

[jno]

oi, PP, you've wandered off into Spain.... you're right of course, British culture is very literary, much less visual, so a limited number of great painters (Turner, Constable) and a limited number of great films too - Francois Truffaut maintained that the words British and film just didn't go together. But you could mention Michael Powell films and Ealing comedies, especially the wordy Kind Hearts and Coronets. And of course great British actors and crew - Brits win a disproportionate number of Oscars.

[Loosehead]

Well we have a culture but it is fashionable to be very coy about it. Mainly because of the dominance over the last 40 years of PC liberal A@*&@s who hate their own country from within. I'm willing to bet that Laurinha is a prime example. You see the very conditions that are created for the anti English English to hate the English are created by the people and the society that they hate. Try it in 90% of the world and your feet won't touch, still I don't expect those blinded by liberal idealogy to see that, It's a sort of poetic irony really. There you go Laurinha now you can fester further in your Anti English petri-dish.

England has given the world too many things to list here and I'm not going to open this up to a pedants charter, the whole world knows what they are.

[THECORBYLOON]

Loosehead, what are all the things the English have given to the world?

[LauraLou]

Vivienne Westwood, great example of English Culture   imo...

[Laurinha]

Okay - I only wrote the petri-dish thing because I saw an easy pun. Britain as a whole, not only England is full of culture and I didn't mean to offend.  However - as soon as I was old enough I did leave the UK for pastures greener and I've had some amazing adventures.  I personally don't like the place much - the weather, the government etc etc and I will never settle here in the UK - I find it dull but this is my opinion and I REALLY DIDN'T want to offend anyone.  Laurinha x