Baked beans, sarcasm, the lochs of Scotland and Emma Thompson. Each have been singled out as unmistakably British institutions that make people proud amid the political scandals and toxic controversies that can sometimes seem overwhelming.
The glimmers of light were identified as the men’s style magazine GQ gathered 15 celebrities — including the sportsmen Anthony Joshua and Ian Wright and the actors Brian Cox and Andrew Garfield — for a “sweet, nostalgic, silly, sublime and absurd” What’s So Great About Britain special September issue.
The heavyweight boxer Joshua said Britain should be as proud as other nations of its storied history. “[We] conquered the world,” he said. “You come to Greece and they’re like, ‘Alexander the Great!’ Be proud, innit? It’s unbelievable. What an achievement. The whole bloody world speaks English or wants to learn English.”
Pubs were held up as a key part of British culture by Anthony Joshua
CHARLOTTE RUTHERFORD
Joshua, 35, declared that there is “nothing” for Britons to be embarrassed about as he identified David Lloyd health clubs and The Badger pub in Watford as the things he missed most when abroad.
“It’s been going since I was a baby, and the same faces are still there,” he said. “That is Britain. Pubs are a massive cornerstone of British culture.”
Joshua, who claimed Jobseeker’s Allowance in his youth, argued that Britain is a fundamentally fair society. “I’ve got the council who come and take my bins. I’ve got 24-hour electric. My son goes to a good school,” he said. “And the NHS. I’ve had family in there, and these people are lifesavers, and that’s free.”
Ian Wright, the football pundit and former England player
CHARLOTTE RUTHERFORD
Wright, the former England and Arsenal striker, agreed that he did not consider Britain to be unequal. “It’s still very tough — it’s not as fair as I’m sure Britain would like to be — but I think that a lot has changed with respect to how people are treated,” he said.
“I don’t want to be negative about our country that I’ve grown up in and it’s given me and my family a lot of opportunities. We could talk about the negative things that come with being a black person, but why? There’s loads of things that can be done better for everybody.”
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Wright, 61, said he considered Emma Thompson — who also appears in the GQ edition — to be a national treasure, adding that Andy Murray and Lewis Hamilton “need to get more love”.
Attenborough was a national treasure for Jade Thirwall of the girlband Little Mix, who added: “Protect him at all costs.”
The beloved naturalist Sir David Attenborough, 99, is held up as a national treasure
ALAMY
Ambika Mod, 29, who starred in the Netflix series One Day, proclaimed baked beans the best British food, while Cox, 79, declared a cooked breakfast, with two slices of black pudding, “unbeatable”.
The Succession star said other countries misjudged the way Britain was run. “The world doesn’t see how democratic we are. We are regarded as a monarchy but that’s mainly a kind of carapace, rather than who we are,” he said.
And despite concerns about poverty in his native Dundee, the actor said society had transformed since his youth.
Brian Cox, the Dundee-born star of the stage and screen
CHARLOTTE RUTHERFORD
“I’m a child of the sixties, and it’s very hard to describe to people what it was like. We were virtually at war for 50 years. So when we came out of that war, our clothes had been taken off. We were slightly naked, but there was a wonderful thing about the freedom,” he said.
“When I went to London at 17, I was welcomed, and that was quite moving to me — that there was a concern about what kind of career I wanted, and how I could fulfil that career.”
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The Spider-Man actor Andrew Garfield, 42, who holds British and American citizenship, said he missed the Tube and nationalised healthcare when he left. He proclaimed the quality of British restaurants, the accent making foreigners think we are smarter than we are and “epic … Arthurian” landscapes in the Lake District, Wales, the lochs in Scotland and the Jurassic Coast.
The success of Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne’s Adolescence and the England football team were named as his other sources of pride.
Andrew Garfield is proud of Britain’s landscapes
CHARLOTTE RUTHERFORD
“Adolescence made me very proud to be British. It was made by British artists, incredible actors and filmmakers and writers. I was like, ‘Yeah, we’re pretty good at this s***’,” Garfield said.
“The men’s football team, and what [Gareth Southgate] did for them, and the kind of the unity it brought. The tenderness between those boys was so evident. Obviously hope is the last thing to die, and it ultimately did. But my God, it was beautiful.”
The What’s So Great About Britain special issue of GQ is available on newsstands and via digital download from September 23.