Cover Story

The Left’s war on Britishness

Anthony Browne

23 July 2005

In their hatred of this country, says Anthony Browne, the terrorists were in one sense very British: self-loathing is the national disease

Golf originated in Scotland in the 15th century. Cricket emerged 700 years ago, and evolved into the game we have today. The French may have invented the nearly obsolete real tennis, but the Victorians created modern tennis. Britain’s rain prompted indoor tennis, and table tennis was born. Harrow School gave the world squash; Rugby School gave the world rugby; the Duke of Beaufort copied the game poona from the Indians and gave the world badminton; the Marquess of Queensberry took bare-knuckle pugilism and turned it into modern boxing, complete with gloves. Every time people play table tennis in China, football in Brazil, cricket in Pakistan or golf in Japan, they are enjoying Britain’s gifts to the world. Any other country which gave organised sport to the world would enjoy it as a proud part of their national identity; but not Britain.

The one thing we do say about ourselves is that we are a nation of inventors, but few of us realise just to what extent. A recent survey by the Science Museum complained that 58 per cent of Britons didn’t realise we invented trains, and 77 per cent didn’t realise we invented jet engines. In fact, we didn’t just invent railways, but our engineers helped revolutionise the world by building them across Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. In 1698 the military engineer Thomas Savery patented the first steam engine (later improved by James Watt), while in 1821 Michael Faraday invented the electric motor. In 1876 the Scotsman Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone; 50 years later John Logie Baird demonstrated television; and in 1989 Tim Berners-Lee invented the internet.

And so it goes on and on — the traffic light, the electromagnet, the underground train (which first ran near the site of the Edgware Road bomb), light bulbs, the pneumatic tyre (thanks, Mr Dunlop), radar, the steel-ribbed umbrella, the Thermos flask, the pocket calculator (thanks, Sir Clive), vaccination, penicillin and cloning (thanks, Dolly).