I am back in London and happy to be out of the heat wave on the Continent. My wife and daughter are spending the afternoon shopping, but after a few hours I have reached my endurance point and grabbed a car back to the apartment.
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My driver is a Pakistani gentleman who is a bit sullen, probably in his mid-30s. I’m trying to make small talk with him, but he doesn’t say much. To get him talking, I ask him what he thinks of Donald Trump. I know he would like to say something fairly nasty, but he is unaware of my politics and doesn’t want to blow his tip. He asks me what I think of Trump, and I tell him that I’m still making up my mind. He laughs a little—a forced laugh. I then tell him that I am sure I like Trump more than most Brits do, and he nods.
“But then, Brits have not really liked any of our leaders going back to George Washington.”
“Well, I don’t go back that far in English history,” he says, half mumbling.
“It’s still your country. You’re British.”
“Well, not everyone thinks so.”
“Yes, but you all are. I mean, you all talk the same. The same funny accent,” I say, finally getting a little laugh out of him.
“You think we all sound the same?” He is incredulous.
“Of course. You not only talk the same, but you all also have the same mannerisms.”
“Now that’s a stretch.”
To my driver, the differences within the population are obvious. But they are not always so obvious to us outsiders. Skin color is irrelevant; outwardly, the speech patterns, phrases, and mannerisms are all British. Or, as an Italian friend once said to me, “Whatever they are speaking doesn’t even sound like English.”
When I walk through London today, it bears little resemblance to the city I first visited in 1979. I’m not sure I even liked London when I first came here. It was incredibly expensive, very, very English, and the food was utterly atrocious.
When I first came here, you had your choice of greasy fish and chips whose greasiness was determined by the “fry times,” which supposedly made the offering “fresher.” Occasionally, there might be a “chef” who could offer you “pizza and chips,” which consisted of dropping a frozen pizza into the fry vat. That was what we lived on as students—that and tea, which was actually very good: little sandwiches, scones, and such. Tea came late enough in the day that you could avoid dinner, get by with a pint and some chips later, and not go to bed hungry. There were people who knew how to cook roasts and lamb, but all of that was very expensive from a young person’s point of view.
In short, England used to be a place where you came to look at the scenery and history and starved—or made do with what everyone else was eating. There were still people alive who remembered the war, and I miss those people. Sure, there were socialists kicking around, but they were mostly Welsh or Irish, or some kind of disruptive, angry person who was still mad about something that happened before 1066. The English, on the whole, were proud of their history, proud of their country and proud of the way they had stood up to the Nazis in the war.
Back then, it felt as though the United States and Britain had never been closer. Music had brought together the British working class, the American working class, and black America. It is important to remember that the Beatles came from working-class Liverpool, and much of the American popular music scene was also working-class. The journalists who wrote about the music—and still don’t understand it to this day—were mostly upper-class eggheads. They weren’t musicians and were utterly feckless in trying to understand American or British music. Better to tune them out and listen for yourself.
Britain was confident enough in those days to take American blues, rock and roll, and soul; turn them into something distinctively British; and then sell the music back to us. It absorbed outside influences without losing its identity. In fact, it made them part of its identity.
Given that London was expensive and the food was poison, visitors wanted to spend time in the countryside. We wanted to see the Lake District associated with Wordsworth and the Romantic poets, Yorkshire from the James Herriot novels, Bath from Jane Austen, or the remnants of old Britain on the way down to Land’s End. Back in the 1980s, the Loch Ness Monster was still on everyone’s mind, so students like Rachel and me would trek up to Aberdeen and beyond, finding the food even worse but the scenery stunning.
The whole time, we never got the impression from talking to anyone that they were ashamed to be British—or Scottish or Welsh—or that their history, warts and all, was anything less than important to them.
For me, things began to shift noticeably in the 1990s. The first sign, which was positive, was that the food got better. Not only were people who actually knew how to cook coming to England, but British kids got their parents out of the kitchen long enough to figure out how everything worked. Suddenly there was a “British culinary scene,” a phrase that would have made anyone burst out laughing in the 1970s. Those words would have made about as much sense as “Canadian wine” or “New York hospitality.” Even little roadside stops in Yorkshire were beginning to produce edible food. Previously, stopping at one of those places was like having dinner with Norman Bates and his mother.
The population started becoming more diverse. Apart from Indians, Pakistanis, and North Africans, there were plenty of young people from Eastern Europe, as well as Asians, and London began to look more like New York than something out of Oliver Twist. It seemed as though all the creative energy that had once been in the music scene had moved into the culinary scene. Being a chef no longer meant slinging mushy peas. It had suddenly become a serious profession.
What accompanied all of this, rather noticeably, was a growing anti-American sentiment—and, beneath it, a growing discomfort with Britain’s own past. The anti-Americanism had started in the 1980s, but by the 1990s it was difficult to miss. The universities had become neo-Marxist hot zones, just as they had in the United States. The old bed-and-breakfast proprietors—the people the same age as my parents or grandparents—were dying, and with them went their memories, traditions, and the things they loved. I loved those things too. Although many of the changes in England were interesting and some were welcome, I would have traded the fusion cuisine for a plate of soggy fish and chips if those people were still around to talk to.
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Walking through London yesterday, it was obvious that this was no longer the old London. At moments, it felt like a city that had been inherited by people with little connection to the civilization that built it. The traditional Londoners are either dead, have moved away, or are increasingly difficult to find. London is now a city of Russians, Arabs, Indians, Pakistanis, Eastern Europeans, disaffected French people, Asians, some obnoxious Americans, and scores of students from all over the world. There are still symbols of the old world: the double-decker buses, driving on the wrong side of the road, English pubs, and neighborhood bakeries. But these things increasingly seem divorced from the beliefs and habits that created them. The distinctly British elements of London can feel like artifacts in a theme park. The institutions that gave birth to them are either dead or dying.
The churches are empty. They are still beautiful and occasionally populated by old hippies and LGBTQ social-justice Anglican priests, but very little of traditional Anglican Christianity seems to remain in public life. Anglicanism no longer appears capable of serving as the country’s spiritual or cultural anchor. I doubt there has ever been such a thing as a “rabid Anglican” in the first place, but when you compare London with Rome or Athens, where the historic religion is still present in the atmosphere, the difference is striking. Islam now displays a public confidence, visibility, and spiritual seriousness that institutional Anglicanism has largely lost. In parts of London, you are more likely to encounter expressions of Islamic faith than hear hymns coming from a local parish church.
The streets are full of Middle Eastern and Turkish restaurants, hookah bars, and other features that can make parts of London feel more like Istanbul than the London I remember. Muslims and the many other groups that have immigrated to London quite clearly like living here. The city has a vibrancy it never had before. But the question is whether a city can absorb the whole world without eventually losing the distinctive civilization that made the city attractive in the first place. There are clearly aspects of the old British culture that the newcomers like. The harder question is whether anyone still understands what created those things—or feels any obligation to preserve them. It sure doesn’t seem that way.
It occurred to me that we may be witnessing a phenomenon that appears late in the life of a civilization, and it is something to behold. The Roman world did not disappear in a single afternoon. Long after faith in the old gods had faded and political authority had weakened, the temples, monuments, titles, and public traditions persisted. Germanic soldiers, officials, and settlers entered the Roman world and, in varying degrees, became Romanized. They adopted Roman titles, law, religion, and customs even as they brought their own traditions with them. The exterior forms survived, but the civilization inside them was changing into something else.
We may be witnessing a similar phenomenon in London. It is becoming a kind of zombie British city: the body still moves, the familiar gestures continue, but the animating spirit is disappearing. The traditions, to the extent that they still exist, are increasingly carried on by newcomers and by a shrinking number of native Britons who preserve the outward forms without necessarily believing in the ideas from which those forms arose.
I am not a Brit, and I do not appreciate it when Americans are made the butt of British jokes. For that, they can kiss my ass. Still, perhaps because I am the child of a veteran, there are things about England that are near and dear to me—things about this country and its traditions that I hope are still taught in school.
The Cenotaph in Whitehall is passed by thousands of commuters and tourists every day, often without a thought for the millions who fought in two world wars, including those who prevented Britain from being subjugated by Nazi Germany. It is an empty tomb for the men who never came home. Is there a thought given to those men who lost their lives today?
A short walk away, the Churchill statue in Parliament Square represents Britain’s refusal to exchange its freedom for a negotiated peace with Hitler. The Battle of Britain Monument depicts how fewer than 3,000 RAF pilots denied Germany command of the skies. The Buxton Memorial, standing in Victoria Tower Gardens in the shadow of Parliament, commemorates Britain’s long campaign against slavery and its use of the Royal Navy to suppress the international slave trade. Do those who rail against colonialism understand the sacrifices made in both Britain and in the United States to eradicate slavery? Would they lay down their lives for a stranger the way these men did?
Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square honors the naval victory that frustrated Napoleon’s ability to invade Britain and helped preserve it as an independent island society while much of Europe lived under imperial rule.
These monuments are not merely decorations. They represent the price paid for the political and personal freedoms that London’s present population enjoys. Every new Londoner—and every native-born Briton who has forgotten his own history—lives on an inheritance accumulated through the courage and sacrifice of people he will never meet. What we lost when the World War II generation passed away was a link to this knowledge and understanding—and the gratitude and humility that came with it.
As I walked through the pleasant chaos of the new London, I kept returning to one final image: the red telephone box.
The red telephone box was never meant to be a decoration. It was designed in the 1920s by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, the architect who later designed Battersea Power Station, as a small public building that anyone could use. The post office made it out of cast iron and painted it bright red so that it could be found easily. The familiar smaller version appeared in 1935, and tens of thousands were eventually installed. Before mobile phones, the box gave everyone access to the outside world. You did not need to own a telephone or have anything more than a few coins. You could call your family, summon a doctor, report a fire, or tell your wife why you were coming home late. The same box served the cabinet minister, the shop assistant, the soldier, and the drunk. It was practical, democratic, and unmistakably British.
Today, most of these boxes no longer contain working telephones. They survive because Britain cannot quite bring itself to throw them away, the same way that each of us cannot stand to part with keepsakes in our own homes. Tourists photograph them, advertisers use them, and local communities turn them into tiny libraries or defibrillator stations. The crown, the red paint, and the word “TELEPHONE” are still there, but the telephone itself is gone.
The red telephone box—and our emotional attachment to it—is a nearly perfect symbol of modern Britain. England has preserved the familiar exterior—the monarchy, Parliament, the parish church, Churchill, the Cenotaph, and all the other comforting scenery. But it is increasingly unsure what any of it means or what its future is. The shape of Britain remains, but much of what once lived inside it has disappeared.
For the present, the conversation has ended, but the symbols are still here. For the sake of future generations of Britons, may the memories never pass away.
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This content originally appeared on the Abstract Truth Substack.
