What’s so Great about Britain? 14 Very Modern Icons on the State of the Nation
September 15, 2025 at 05:40PMFrom food to politics, 14 celebrities share what Britain means to them in 2025, offering perspectives that go far beyond red carpets and runways. Their reflections—proud, critical, and often funny—capture a nation juggling creativity and diversity with class tensions and post-Brexit unease. In an era of global identity crises, it’s a mirror well worth gazing into.
People from elsewhere get a lot wrong about our country.
Garfield: People with the British accent get away with a lot. People just imagine we’re smarter than we are. I’m not against that, personally…
Cox: [The world] doesn’t see how democratic we are, honestly. We are regarded as a monarchy, which we are, but that’s mainly a kind of carapace, rather than who we are.
Dimoldenberg: In people’s view, it’s either The Crown or Oliver Twist, when actually there’s varied different groups across the spectrum of class, race and political divide.
Isaacs: I do think we’re less important than how we like to paint ourselves. I don’t think other countries really care what we think and what we say, but we have an outsized nuclear arsenal, and that gives us a place on the [UN] Security Council.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/09/15/whats-so-great-about-britain-14-very-modern-icons-on-the-state-of-the-nation/
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