Cheer up - we’re still world leaders in so many fields
SOMETIMES we can take for granted the enormity of our nation’s creative impact on the world. This week British talent has taken the Golden Globe nominations by storm. Six British actresses and eight actors are up for awards chosen by the Hollywood Press Association – awards that frequently point towards Oscars as well. Not only that but many of the nominated movies are based on British creativity too.
Nominee Emily Blunt stars in Mary Poppins Returns. based on the ever-popular story by P L Travers, reminding us that fiction by a host of home-grown authors including Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, JRR Tolkien and JK Rowling continue to entertain people around the world in money-spinning dramas.
Nominated best movie Bohemian Rhapsody, about British rock band Queen, demonstrates the continuing global appeal of our popular music genius from The Beatles and Led Zeppelin to Ed Sheeran and Clean Bandit. Singer Annie Lennox picks up a nomination for her original song in A Private War. TV hit of the year Bodyguard is up for best drama series.
Even our odd political history can have an appeal beyond our shores with Hugh Grant picking up a nomination for his perfect rendition of disgraced Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe in A Very English Scandal.
IN A world where current affairs is seemingly becoming cruder, British creative classiness still counts for a lot. I was at Fortnum & Mason in London this week buying Christmas presents for my family and the elegantly packaged classic English food was just flooding out of the doors.
At a time when our high streets are being battered by American internet companies, it was good to hear that Fortnum’s latest sales figures were up 12 per cent, marking their sixth successive year of doubledigit retail growth. Opened in 1707, it is still British owned.
In nearby Jermyn Street and Savile Row, tourists were sweeping up classic British clothes – another one of our world-beating design talents. With echoes of James Bond, the Savile Row suit itself is now a star in the internationally successful Kingsman movies. It was also interesting to see in the surprise hit comedy Crazy Rich Asians, set mainly in Singapore, that when some of the richest people in the world decide to spend their money they choose a British education for their children, preferring a classy English accent to an American one. Our educational services are big generators of profits for this country.
As far away as you can get in Mongolia, British creativity is having an impact. Not only do we sell enormous mining machinery to the mineral rich country, but we have solved a local problem with typical British ingenuity. In a recent documentary about the Foreign Office, our woman out there at the time, Ambassador Catherine Arnold, helped a British designer deal with the high pollution in the Mongolian capital. Locals didn’t want to wear normal face masks because they looked unattractive. Our answer was to design exquisite masks, using local patterns, that suddenly became a hit in Ulan Bator.
Our embassies abroad have to justify the expense of maintaining their staff by helping generate profitable deals for UK traders and creatives. When I was recently in China, it was great to walk into a lavatory in a top hotel in Shanghai and dry my hands with a Dyson machine. Sir James Dyson was recently criticised for shifting manufacture of some of his products to Singapore, but it is a sign of his global reach that his British-designed goods need to be produced closer to growing markets in Asia. He is also sinking millions of his own money into engineering a new generation of electric cars.
O‘Britain grew rich on ingenuity and talent’
F COURSE our Royal Family continues to be a great British brand and their younger generation is more than making its mark. Prince Harry’s Invictus Games was a bold idea and this year it made for a wonderful event in Australia gathering more and more international support and participation.
The importance of British sport for promoting our commercial interests around the world cannot be underestimated, said an embassy official recently in Nigeria. In Africa’s richest country Britishinvented football is a national obsession and the English Premier League is the most watched sporting contest. At least 260 million Africans watch it across the continent.
Britain has grown rich on its ingenuity and creative talent, from engineering to design and performance. All we need is for politicians at home and in the EU to get out of our way and let our creatives get on with the job of selling their brilliant skills around the world.
We mustn’t forget that it is not governments that trade with governments, it is individual talents and businesses that export themselves and they are doing a pretty good job of it on their own.
We just need to believe in ourselves as world-beaters and it seems we already have enough great creative talents who do that now, just by looking at the remarkable list of British Golden Globe nominees. Good luck to them all when the winners are revealed in January.
In the meantime this Christmas, I’m going to slump on our sofa sipping English sparkling wine, nibbling Fortnum & Mason biscuits while watching a Charles Dickens box-set drama with the sound of Slade’s Merry Christmas Everybody playing in the background.
God bless British creativity!