English

by Ben Fogle

  But this book is about Englishness – or, as I decided to describe it to myself, living Englishly.

  I am no social scientist or historian. I have no academic credentials in ‘Englishness’; in fact the subject has already been tackled by people far more learned and academic than myself – both Jeremy Paxman and Kate Fox have written brilliantly about Englishness. But what I do have is a burning passion, a drive and, most importantly, a pride in my identity. I love to celebrate this identity in all its quirkiness.

  Cheese rolling is a good example of a national trait that rather accurately describes the character of Englishness – eccentricity. The dictionary definitions are pretty concise: according to the Collins English Dictionary, ‘Eccentricity is unusual behaviour that other people consider strange.’ The Oxford English Dictionary, meanwhile, defines ‘eccentric’ as ‘(of a person or their behaviour) unconventional and slightly strange.’

  And, like a moth to a light, I have long been attracted to eccentricity. The child of an actress, it is fair to say that I grew up around a fair amount of oddball behaviour. My mother would often meet me at the school gates wearing a wild wig, heavy make-up and with some new and unrecognizable accent as she immersed herself in whatever her current role happened to be.

  My immediate reaction was one of embarrassment. Like many children, I wanted to be a sheep and follow the crowd. I didn’t want to be different, to stand out.

  But as I became older I found myself drawn to the unusual. Strange places and people. I remember meeting the Englishwoman who ran Helga’s Folly in Sri Lanka, and who walked around wearing black lace escorted by a dozen Dalmatians; or the British spy living in the Costa Rican jungle with tales of tea with Colonel Gaddafi and riding in tanks with Saddam Hussein; or peculiar aristocrats like Lord Bath and his dozens of ‘wifelets’.

  I found myself drawn to eccentric landscapes like Dungeness with its crazy, Daliesque architecture, or competing in an array of eccentric fixtures from the Brambles cricket match in the middle of the Solent to the World Stinging-Nettle Eating Championships.

  Does that make me an eccentric? I don’t think so, but there is most certainly one within. The joy of eccentricity is that you don’t care. Look at the Fulfords, the aristocratic family made famous by Channel 4’s The Fu@£ing Fulfords for an example of really not giving a F@£k. I am pretty confident that I will eventually become a bow-tie-wearing eccentric surrounded by dozens of dogs. It really is only a matter of time.

  Eccentricity aside, I consider myself a proud Englishman. I was born in Marylebone, London, the capital of England. I am a Land Rover-driving, Labrador-owning, Marmite-eating, tea-drinking, wax-jacketed, Queen-loving Englishman. And yet technically I’m not. I’m actually an imposter. My grandfather was Scottish and my father is Canadian. In all honesty, I am a mongrel. A mixed breed with no obvious authority to write a book about Englishness, And yet I have lived my life being described as the quintessential Englishman. Over time some of those traits and characteristics have perhaps become exaggerated. I blame travel. Despite my childhood adoption of a few Canadian pronunciations, my accent and dialect has changed according to my location. Believe it or not, I haven’t always sounded like this. Like what? you might ask. Well, for those who have never heard me talk, I am a little bit Posh. Correction. I’m not posh but I sound posh. RP – Received Pronunciation – is the official term. IT MEANS I PRO-NOUNCE EVERY WORD AND SYL-A-BYL CLEARLY.

  The first changes to my accent came when I went to live in Ecuador, South America. For the first time, I became proud of my heritage. Subconsciously it was probably also an effort to distance myself from America and Americans. I lived with a beautiful family called the Salazars, and Mauro, my Ecuadorian ‘father’, was obsessed with all things English. ‘Tell me about hooligans?’ he would ask over a plate of beans and rice. ‘And what about the Queen?’ He was obsessed with Benny Hill and Oasis and Four Weddings and a Funeral.

  He would spend hours quizzing me on the motherland, and I suppose I began subliminally to morph into a sort of Hugh Grant caricature. Several further years in Central and South America and I became fixated on my heritage, hoarding jars of Marmite and boxes of PG Tips. It was only when I returned to give a talk at my former school in Dorset that one of my teachers commented on the changes to my accent.

  I genuinely believe that it is all the time away, overseas, exploring and adventuring that has given me time to think and explore my national identity. Sometimes, when you are too close to something, it is difficult to reflect honestly; often, we don’t like what we see.

  Let’s be frank: England itself doesn’t have a glowing halo when it comes to colonial and imperial history. Indeed, we are rightly embarrassed by much of our past. And now we face turbulent times in which we, as the wider nation, have been forced to ask ourselves who we are. What began with an emotionally charged independence referendum for Scotland ended with Great Britain’s decision to leave the European Union. In the light of all of that, what does it mean to be English?

  It is a loaded subject and a loaded book to write, full of pitfalls and taboo subjects that cause upset and irritation. It is why I occasionally feel I should never have written it. It is the reason I have agonized over it. It has given me sleepless nights.

  Of course, it is easy to paint a national character with brushstrokes of stereotyping, and I will make no apology for my effort to explore many of these traits. After I had got beyond the stream of abuse from Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish occasioned by writing a book about Englishness, the character traits people suggested most often on social media were queuing, Marmite, umbrellas, the Queen, tea, fish and chips, Wimbledon, not complaining, bad teeth, dry humour, wax jackets, muddy Glastonbury, politeness, and the weather.

  All of them iconically English, but it is the weather that has fascinated me the most. It is such a huge part of our national identity. It dominates our conversations. It is the subject of endless fascination and has, in my humble opinion, been the catalyst for so much of what makes England and the English what we are.

  Again, if I’m honest I wanted to write a book about the weather. I wanted to explore our complex relationship with the weather – something we love to hate. The more I explored and researched, the more I became convinced that it is indeed the weather that has come to define us as a nation. Almost everything, every national trait and quirk and foible, can be attributed in some form to the weather. Okay, sometimes the link can be pretty tenuous, but it’s always there. So, often in this book, the chapters will explore a topic and our climate will be lurking in the background, lighting the subject with its changeable, unpredictable presence.

  When I was a young boy, there was a song that we used to play over and over. It was one of my mother’s songs from the film Half a Sixpence, in which she starred alongside Tommy Steele. I can still remember every word:

  If the rain’s got to fall, let it fall on Wednesday,

  Tuesday, Monday, any day but Sunday

  Sunday’s the day when it’s got to be fine,

  ’Cause that’s when I’m meeting my girl.

  If the rain’s got to fall, let it fall on Maidstone,

  Kingston, Oakstone, anywhere but Folkestone,

  Folkestone’s the place where it’s got to be fine.

  ’Cause that’s where I’m meeting my girl.

  What could be wetter or damper

  Than to sit on a picnic hamper

  Sippin’ a sasparella underneath a leaky umbrella?

  If the rain’s got to fall, let it fall on Thursday,

  Saturday, Friday, any day but my day.

  Sunday’s the day when it’s got to be fine,

  ’Cause that’s when I’m meeting my girl.

  The weather is a fundamental part of who we are. It has been estimated that weather-obsessed British people spend on average six months of their lives talking about whether it’s going to rain or shine, according to a survey published recently. Speculation about whether it’s going to be wet, c
omplaints about the cold and murmurings about the heat are also the first points of conversation with strangers or colleagues for 58 per cent of Britons, the survey recorded. Another study found that Britons talk about the weather for about two days (forty-nine hours, to be exact) every year and the subject comes up more often than work, what is on television, sport or gossip.

  Nineteen per cent of over-65s questioned also believe they can predict the weather as well as a professional weatherman. We are a nation whose starting and ending points are the weather.

  The more I roamed England, the more I turned the nature of the book over in my head. Then one day, as I walked through the rain along Blackpool beach, I thought to myself, ‘That’s it. This is an honest portrait of my own experiences of Englishness over the years. The weather seeps into every corner of our English personality but the book is actually about understanding Englishness. It’s about Marmite, umbrellas, wonky teeth, sporting innovation and heroic failure. It’s about bad food and royalty and Hugh-Grant type characters. It’s as diverse as the nation itself.’

  And what about the divide? Is there really such a thing as one Englishness? We might be a tiny island, but geographically and socially we are arguably one of the most diverse nations in the world. There is the obvious North/South divide, but there are more nuanced differences across the counties that make up England.

  Shortly before I handed in my manuscript, my editor emailed me. ‘Do you think you could call it British?’ he asked. My heart sank, but it also gave me the resolve to lift my head and puff out my chest.

  I am English (sort of) and I am proud of it, and this is my story of Living Englishly.

  CHAPTER ONE

  WHATEVER THE WEATHER

  ‘Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.’

  John Ruskin

  Millbank Studios, opposite the Houses of Parliament, was a hive of political activity as I made my way into the entrance hall.

  ‘Hello Ben,’ smiled a smart-looking man in full naval ceremonial dress.

  ‘Hello sir.’

  It was Lord West of Spithead, former First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff. During my Royal Naval Reserve days, he was kind of a big deal. He also happens to be the father of my great friend, Will.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he enquired. ‘About to climb Everest?’

  ‘I’m here to be a weather presenter.’ At which point I think I lost his attention and he marched off towards Parliament with a wink.

  I was ushered down a narrow corridor, through a high-security door and into a large TV studio, ITV Weather’s dedicated meteorological nerve centre. I had decided that any quest in search of Englishness had to start with a visit to the place we go for our daily weather fix.

  ‘Hello Ben,’ smiled Lucy Verasamy. ‘Cup of tea?’ she asked (obeying rule one of Englishness).

  There was no need for weather small talk here. Lucy is weather. She lives the weather and she loves the weather. ‘What percentage of your life do you spend talking about the weather?’ I asked.

  ‘About fifty per cent,’ she smiled.

  When it comes to dinner-party conversation, Lucy’s job must make her the best guest. All her weather small talk is big talk. She knows everything about it. She positively oozes weather fanaticism, speaking at 100mph. I thought I was good at talking until I met Lucy.

  ‘Do you want to see the studio?’

  I felt like a child in a sweet shop. I’m sure I’m not supposed to be this thrilled by a weather studio, but apparently I’m not alone. ‘People do get pretty excited,’ she admitted as we walked into a large empty room with a huge green piece of fabric hanging from the wall. ‘Same one Harry Potter’s cloak was made from,’ she winked.

  She walked onto her presenting mark and immediately an image of her standing in front of a large map of the British Isles appeared on one of the monitors. This is the picture of the professional weather presenter we’re used to seeing.

  Given that we can now access the weather from multiple sources, I wondered what the role of a weather presenter is in 2017.

  ‘You can get weather apps, weather online, weather in social media, in the papers, on the radio,’ she explained, ‘but the weather presenter’s role is to interpret that data and translate it for our viewers.’ A digital weather report can’t predict humidity, hay fever risk and all the other important effects of the conditions on our lives.

  ‘What’s the most common question?’

  ‘“Is it going to snow at Christmas?” followed by “Will it be a hot summer?”’

  You can’t say we aren’t predictable.

  Of course, all weather presenters are now marked by the most notorious weather-presenting ‘moment’ on 15 October 1987, when Michael Fish got the forecast wrong in spectacular style. ‘Earlier today a woman rang the BBC and said she’d heard there was a hurricane on the way. Don’t worry. There isn’t,’ he announced cheerily during the weather slot on the One O’Clock News that day. That night, force 11 winds gusted across the south of England for several hours, uprooting 15 million trees and causing total mayhem. Fish’s legendary ‘blooper forecast’ has since had more than half a million hits on YouTube.

  In a typically English way, Fish has lived up to the ‘gaffe’ – though he maintains he was talking about a different storm system over the North Atlantic which didn’t reach England, not the depression from the Bay of Biscay that caused the damage. He makes regular appearances on comedy shows, reliving the ‘hurricane blooper’ with self-deprecating humour. Thanks to the bankability of weather as a topic of interest to the English, the controversy has spun its own cultural sideshow. The term ‘the Michael effect’ was coined for the tendency ever since of weather presenters to predict a worst-case scenario in order to avoid being caught out. Fish appeared as guest presenter of the weather news on the twentieth anniversary of the Great Storm. A clip of his original bulletin was immortalized and given global exposure as part of a video montage in the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Summer Olympics.

  Back in the 1980s and early 90s, weathermen really were a big deal. Ulrika Jonsson began her career as a ‘weather girl’, becoming the nation’s sweetheart. Michael Fish’s weather rival was John Kettley, and together they were immortalized in a 1988 novelty hit by A Tribe of Toffs from Sunderland, ‘John Kettley is a Weatherman’:

  John Kettley is a weatherman

  a weatherman

  a weatherman

  John Kettley is a weatherman

  And so is Michael Fish

  ‘People still talk about Michael Fish,’ Lucy marvels, ‘even people who weren’t born till after the storm.’ It’s one of my first observations about our obsession with the weather that weather forecasters can become national treasures. Lucy trained under the eye of another great weatherman, Francis Wilson. Amongst Francis’ many accolades is he was the first to use computer-generated graphics on British television.

  ‘Have a go on the weather map,’ Lucy says. ‘Use the map, but engage with the audience,’ she explains as I stand in front of the invisible map ‘hidden’ in the green screen. I glance at the monitor and there, in full Technicolor glory, is my face and arms, gesticulating to the map.

  ‘We are one of the few live TV broadcasts not to use autocue,’ she says with pride.

  Behind me on the television monitor is a map of Britain with moving weather arrows to show the direction of wind, and large green patches to show the rain and showers. More easily identifiable are the yellow and orange circles showing the temperature – the deeper the orange, the hotter the forecast temperature.

  ‘It will begin cool in the south before getting warmer.’ My attempt at presenting makes me feel slightly fraudulent. And then I remember that ITV Weather alone has 15 million viewers a week and realize the responsibility of the job.

  The problem with Britain is that most of the big weather is in the nort
h, while the majority of the dense populations are in the south. The result for a weather presenter can be arms waving wildly high and low on the map, like some Karate Kid impersonation. ‘Francis always told me not to look like I was dancing or chopping with my arms,’ Lucy explains.

  ‘People love to grumble about the weather,’ she smiles, ‘too hot, too cold, too windy. I suppose it plays up to our national stereotype of a nation of grumblers.’ Interestingly, she attributes the vast number of weather apps now available to our eternal search for ‘the right weather’: if people don’t like a weather prediction, they will look for one that suits them. Trying to tame the untameable weather.

  Lucy explains that there are several features that make the English weather what it is, changeable and famously unpredictable. As part of the United Kingdom, England lies between latitudes 50 and 56 degrees north. An island country, it sits on the western seaboard of the continent of Europe, surrounded by sea. The English live at a point where competing air masses meet, creating atmospheric instability and unsettled weather. In The Teatime Islands, my first book, I described England/Britain from the perspective of a faraway outpost as ‘this small rainy island in Western Europe’.

  On the other side of the country, our geographical position on the edge of the Atlantic places us at the end of a storm track, a relatively narrow area of ocean down which storms travel, driven by the prevailing winds. As the warm and cold air fly towards and over each other, the earth’s rotation creates cyclones and the UK bears the tail end of them.

  What makes our climate so mild is the Gulf Stream, which raises the temperature in the UK by up to 5°C in winter. It also adds moisture to the atmosphere, which makes it much harder to predict the weather as it adds to the number of variables that need to be forecast.

  These variables mean vastly unpredictable weather. I can remember both snow at Easter and also such heat that the chocolate eggs were melting. November can be hotter than June, and winter often doesn’t arrive until February. We are more likely to have snow at Easter than Christmas. We can wear T-shirts in November. It’s all topsy-turvy, and that is what we love to talk about. Even within England, some regions are more susceptible than others to certain kinds of weather as the air masses jostle for dominance. North-west England is buffeted by the maritime polar air mass, which can bring frequent showers at any time of the year. North-east England is more exposed to the continental polar air mass, which brings cold dry air. The south and south-east are closest to the continental tropical air mass, which carries warm dry air. The south-west is the area most exposed to the maritime tropical air mass, which ushers in warm moist air. Wet, dry, warm, cold, it is a proper maelstrom. ‘There’s a lot of weather about today,’ meteorological sages like to say mysteriously, as if the skies are full of gods of the elements whimsically calling the shots with thunderbolts and winds, lightning and storms. No wonder so many folk sayings ‘reading the weather’ remain popular. ‘Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight. Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning’ first appears in the Bible in the Gospel of Matthew but has led to variations such as ‘Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky in the morning, sailor’s warning’. ‘Rain before seven, fine by eleven’ is another which emphasizes the variability of the weather systems passing over our green and pleasant land.