The Berkeley Guides:
Berkeley Guide to Europe:
Great Britain and Northern Ireland:
Background Information for
Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Never mind whether you've been to Great Britain before--for the English-speaking traveler, to come here is to come back here. If there is a sense of tradition we share, vague and nostalgic or bitter and mocking, it was born in large part here. Romantic poetry, the King James Bible, Adam Smith's vision of capitalism, Charles Darwin's revolution, and that damned Puritan work ethic are all legacies of the Commonwealth, elements of the parent culture from which an empire sprang. Whether we come here with enthusiasm or misgivings, many of us come to Britain seeking our history.
There is indeed a palpable sense of history here. Stone circles off the main roads hint at prehistoric civilizations and ways of life we can only guess about. Westminster Abbey's worn stone floors have seen just about every kind of human footwear, from noble slippers to aerobics trainers. Some pubs even have signs over their doors saying "Rebuilt 1618" and "Founded ad 1400." Yet if these places inspire an eerie sense of déjà vu, it's because we've seen them before, courtesy of William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Dylan Thomas, Oscar Wilde, and a great host of others. Their stories and fairy tales have been handed down to us since we were tots, and here they are--or at least, here are their remains.
One of the benefits of the 20th century is that official histories of warring kings and clans, of manners and the manor-born, are no longer taken at face value. A new history is being told, the story of those who did not win: working-class Welsh, Irish bricklayers, and ex-colonials. Alongside museum displays of royal pomp and pageantry, there are now exhibits about coal miners and crofters. Even more telling, there's a vibrant culture thriving outside Britain's traditional centers. For years now, London's club scene has shared the spotlight with its counterparts in sooty industrial cities like Manchester and Leeds, cities where the politics are unabashedly liberal, and the "wrong" accents are the ones that smack of southern snobbery. Despite the uncertain welcome extended to immigrants from India, Pakistan, the Caribbean, and Hong Kong, these groups have also done much to infuse new life into the country. The most obvious evidence is culinary and musical, though the trend towards multiculturalism has taken root everywhere, pushing the stodgier elements of Britain into the periphery, like it or not.
But don't expect the keepers of Britain's cultural flame to roll over and play dead. When you come right down to it, the Brits are stubbornly passionate about their homeland and convinced of their innate superiority to the rest of the world. You only have to see the Brits abroad to realize that, despite their long experience of Empire (or perhaps because of it), they feel the British way is the right way. Even on holidays, they mope if they can't get beef burgers, chips, and a pint of bitter, and they get in a terrible snit if the locals don't speak English. Buy them a pint, in fact, and they'll tell you why your country's got it all wrong and how the Brits could do it a damn sight better.
Yet if you make the mistake of coming up with generalizations about how bland, uptight, and closed-minded the British are, you deserve to have a bland, uptight, closed-minded experience. Britain is as much about soot-faced coal miners as it is about Beefeaters--as much about burly sheep farmers as it is about the Rasta hawking Eddie Grant bootlegs in a London street market.
Don't skip the classic sights: A peek at the spoils of empire housed within London's British Museum reveals more about imperialism than a stack of history books ever could. By the same token, a stroll around the grounds of Buckingham Palace or Edinburgh Castle gives a better sense of royal wealth, power, and influence than a thousand stories in the Sun. On the other hand, don't get sucked into the tour-package version of Britain--a Disneyesque montage of busbied sentries and kilted bagpipers. Don't be afraid to grab the latest copy of New Music Express and a Thermos full of strong Earl Grey, and plant yourself on Trafalgar Square in the wee hours of a Sunday morning. Or go and see what inspired Wordsworth in the Lake District, gawk at the grandeur of the West Country coast, and eat Balti Indian food for the first time in Birmingham. The possibilities are truly endless, as peculiar and varied as the towns cluttering the map.
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