‘The country of my birth has lost its heart’: Miriam Margolyes on how to fix broken Britain
A funny thing happened on the way to 2026: I got old and the world turned nasty. It happened very quickly and it’s to do with politics (the world) and pelvic floor weakness (mine). It’s strange being this old. Sometimes when I look in the mirror, it’s a shock to see wrinkles and grey hair, because inside I am still that naughty Oxford High School girl, risking detention just for the joy of entertaining her friends. People assume that with great age comes great wisdom, but actually we remain who we have always been, only more so, and we need to make our peace with that and with each other.
The Britain I grew up in, though – that feels almost unrecognisable, and everyone I speak to says the same thing. The historian Eric Hobsbawm, whom I knew and loved, argued that people invent the past they want for their own purposes – that the real past was quite different: “Today is the great age of historical mythology.” He’s right, but that past is still the safe haven I’d like to return to. People feel adrift, they don’t understand or feel a connection to the place they thought they knew.
Now at 85, I look around at my remaining friends and at my unique relationship with a woman of different qualities but luckily the same politics. In many ways I’m having the time of my life: I’ve never been richer or more in demand. And yet my heart is heavy with foreboding …
My postwar generation lived through the rise and fall of many things: the Berlin Wall, Winston Churchill, the European Union, the NHS, the Beatles, Profumo, Elizabeth II, the Great Train Robbery, the pill, the IRA, Margaret Thatcher, the Falklands war, Black Monday and Grenfell, heart transplants, driverless cars, Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic. But this feels the worst time yet.
The things we took for granted – free speech, the Post Office, our local bank, even the home telephone – are disappearing. The US is an enemy. Evil oligarchs and their influence stalk the world, my world, your world. In recent times, the archbishop of Canterbury resigned and north London Jews are afraid to wear a Magen David (Shield or Star of David) necklace outside their homes for fear of being attacked. You’re brave to open your mouth these days. Indeed, many have demanded I keep mine shut. But I can’t. The present has become threatening, hostile and unwelcoming to us – much as our shores must feel to asylum seekers, as they scramble for a foothold in our United Kingdom. It also feels as though the country of my birth has lost its heart. How did we get here?
Now, I’m not usually one to tell jokes. Like my farts, my humour is largely unscripted. I love making people laugh, but at heart I’m a serious person, not just a funny little wobbly thing. I’m not a fan of jokes at the expense of others, those that are trite and mean and racist. But I’ve discovered that, in terms of the relationships and tensions between our nations, sometimes jokes go straight to the jugular.
An Englishman is driving down a country road in Wales and realises he’s lost his way. He spots a local and pulls up alongside. “Dai! Dai!” he calls out in a lordly English accent, “which way is it to Cardiff ?” The Welshman eyes him up and down: “Just a minute now, how did you know my name was Dai?” The Englishman says, “I guessed, man! I guessed!” “Well, better guess your way to bloody Cardiff then, hadn’t you!”
An Irishman, a Scotsman, a Welshman and an Englishman are on a plane which is going down and there is only one parachute. The Scotsman says, “Scotland will remember me,” and jumps out to his death. The Welshman says, “Wales will remember me,” and jumps to his death. The Irishman says, “Ireland will remember me,” and pushes the Englishman out of the plane.
I don’t think the English understand why their Welsh, Scottish and Irish neighbours loathe them so much. Like the Englishman in the first joke, they’re rather baffled by the hostility, while prolonging it with their arrogant attitudes. This behaviour is, of course, not isolated to them. It turns out that we Brits are even less popular abroad than we are with each other. The history of the British Isles is full of painful moments and terrible decisions. And we need to face those. It’s much easier to look away from bad things that happened and, as with a fart, hope no one noticed. (Spoiler: everyone noticed.) Like every multinational corporation, Great Britain plc has done a lot of harm in its long life. The choice of red to represent the British empire on the global map feels entirely apt. Take these unloving nicknames that zoom in on our annoyingness, inability to wear suncream and/or stop swearing:
Brittunculi This one’s the oldest: it was found on a tablet at the Roman fort of Vindolanda on Hadrian’s Wall, a Latin term showing exasperation and meaning “wretched little Brits”.
Poms This is what the Australians and New Zealanders call us. There are various theories: the late journalist Alan Whicker said “Pom” was short for pomegranate, the bright red colour a new arrival turns in the sun down under. Others claim that Pommie is really “POME”, which stands for prisoner of mother England, and thus the British convicts who were transported to Botany Bay.
Rooinek or “redneck” The Boer nickname for the pale Brits, dangerously sunburnt again. Afrikaners of old had a ruder nickname for us, though – soutpiel (“salty penis”) – meaning that the Brits had one foot back home, the other in South Africa, so their penises were left to dangle in the salty ocean.
Limeys The American term, originating in the 1850s as “lime-juicer”, from the Royal Navy practice of adding lemon or lime juice to British sailors’ daily ration to ward off the scurvy that made all their teeth fall out.
Inselaffen Translating as “island monkeys”, this is the Germans’ contemptuous nickname, supposedly dating back to Darwin’s theories of evolution.
Les rosbifs “Roast beefs”; this French take is based on our fondness for a traditional Sunday roast. Historically they also called us “les goddams”, which originated in the hundred years war, referring to the typically potty-mouthed English soldiers. (So that’s where I got it from!) More recently, British tourists have been called “les fuckoffs”. Très charmant!
My point is, history has always been the propaganda of the victors, but it can lead you astray. So why not try listening to the other side of the story? Don’t fall for your own hype. It all seems heroic if you turn it into a monologue about why you were right all along, instead of facing the painful bits from which there’s no way you can come out well.
Our British history needs to reflect our mother tongue, which is a patchwork of words gathered from the different tribes and peoples who’ve made these islands home. There’s room for everyone: we all bring something to the table, whether invader or inhabitant. The French word for a fanlight or transom window is vasistas and comes from the seven years war, when the German soldiers were baffled by the newfangled windows they saw in French houses and kept asking “Was ist das?” The French word is a joke, a snooty echo of the German reactions, but it stuck.
People are always trying to fix language, but it remains on the move. The Normans tried to make England French; the English tried to ban the native Irish, Welsh and Scottish languages for “the greater common good” and then later to replace regional dialect and accents with received pronunciation. What idiots! Not only did they not succeed, but our shared language has ended up all the richer. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
Now I know many of my opinions – particularly those on politics, Palestine and Potter (Harry) – have provoked outrage. But I can’t help it – I believe in telling the truth, even if it’s my truth. In this, again, I realise I do not fit the English stereotype. The English excel at obfuscation, you see; they are masters at avoiding the truth. It’s that rule of polite society again: one mustn’t rock the boat, ruffle feathers or put anyone’s nose out of joint. How absurd. Facts are facts.
My advice? If you believe someone is a liar, stay away from them. All around us, our politicians, news outlets and the media – the very people we are supposed to trust – are caught up in a relentless and divisive campaign of fearmongering and misinformation. Now it feels more crucial than ever to think for ourselves, debunk the deceits and sort the sheep from the goats.
Mummy used to say “speak as you find”, and I think that’s an excellent way of sorting out decent folk from the vile. What unites us is far greater than what divides. Don’t be afraid to learn from everything wrong in our past – and there is a lot wrong in our past – let’s just do it better in the future.
I bet you didn’t know I was once a Tory candidate. But unlike most of the former Conservatives who have swelled the ranks of the current Deform party, I have grown into maturity and swung left. My campaign was in May 1955: I was 14 and in the upper fourth at Oxford High School. A general election was being held in the country, and we decided to hold one at school. Of course I was a Conservative: my parents had always been Tories – it was all I knew. They both worshipped Winston Churchill and credited him with having saved the United Kingdom from the Nazis. For Mummy, being Tory was a key part of her upwardly mobile climb, and so it was for my father, who, despite being a passionate supporter of the newly created NHS, could not imagine following Labour. They were delighted to hear I was the Tory candidate. We don’t remember who dared to stand against me in our form, or what my policies and promises were at the hustings – I was an old-school Tory and definitely pro capital punishment, so I dread to think – but I carried the day.
Lawrence Turner, the Tory who won the Oxford constituency when I won the upper fourth, went on to vote in favour of the Suez invasion, spend more than he earned and finally go bankrupt. Rather sweetly, one of his last parliamentary activities was presenting a petition to preserve the copyright of the words of WS Gilbert, one half of the prolific theatrical partnership Gilbert and Sullivan who created the comic operas that were the ironic soundtrack to the burgeoning British empire. Turner proved ineffectual again: he was not “the very model of a modern major-general” or even of a modern member of parliament, and copyright expired in 1961.
Right seemed self-evidently right until I was assailed on two respectable fronts. After my election success, the father of my best chum from those days, Biddy Peppin, insisted I was invited to tea. He was that unusual thing, a leftwing bank manager, and his chosen task was to turn my path into a socialist future. And then another friend, Liz Hodgkin, also invited me for dinner. The Hodgkins were academic royalty – Liz’s mother Dorothy was later to win a Nobel prize – but they were committed socialists, too. You know how sometimes you can fall in love with a whole family? Well, I did. Their dinner guests were all communists and convinced Marxists (oh, that I had the courage to be a Marxist now, but that Putin, he puts me right off) and were winsome, hugely entertaining and great storytellers. Previously I had thought of communists as grim and humourless but boy, was I wrong. And so, eventually, this lady was for turning. I made a U-turn in the direction of sanity and humanity, and have never looked back. My parents were surprised and shocked by my new politics. But had they lived to experience the full horror of the last 14 years of Conservative reign under Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and finally Sunak, I hope they, too, would have seen the light and embraced the left.
The rise of the far right in Britain today can be traced back to a daft dyke. It depresses me to share that one of my fellow lesbians could be so silly, but the truth must be faced, and in 1923, Rotha Lintorn-Orman founded the first British fascist movement. In 1895 she was born in Kensington (where else?!) into enormous wealth. Obviously liking uniforms and women – and women in uniforms – she and a close chum originally wanted to join the Boy Scouts, but the Scouts wouldn’t have them. When the first world war broke out, she served as an ambulance driver, and was decorated for valour.
After the war, Lintorn-Orman, a passionate admirer of Mussolini, formed the British Fascisti. But other, more extreme fascist societies proliferated and soon Lintorn-Orman and her cronies were outflanked. She descended into alcoholism and drug addiction, indulging in “drunken orgies and undesirable practices”, and her organisation died. But fascism would live on – from Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts right through to Tommy Robinson.
Now I’m old, I understand that older people like things “the way they were”. Me, too: I hate upgrades – be it in computers, in phones, in style, in my neighbours. I want what I had. And so, change (which the politicians tell us we want), I actively don’t want. Change makes me feel powerless and then I get angry and look for someone to blame. At least I know enough not to blame immigrants and asylum seekers. The mess the country’s in has got nothing to do with them, but too many of us have been bamboozled into thinking it has.
I grew up knowing I’d receive a fine education and would get a job when I left university (which was free in 1963). Fascism had had its day, we thought. More than 70 million people had died to secure our freedom. But now racism was impossible to ignore, as one by one the last vestiges of the Empire started claiming their independence. The Windrush generation came to Britain – at the government of the time’s invitation – to staff our new welfare state, believing they were wanted and would be appreciated for leaving their homes and families, but finding the promised motherland felt harsh, hostile and unwelcoming.
Taking advantage of this highly charged political climate, a new British fascist party – the National Front – was born in early 1967. The next year Enoch Powell, Conservative MP for Wolverhampton South West, made his “Rivers of Blood” speech. He posed as a brave visionary; perhaps he even believed that he was giving voice to the displaced white community of the Midlands who felt crowded out by Black and Asian immigrants.
I knew straight away what Powell wanted to achieve with the speech: to fan the flames of public dissent. His Oxford education, classical training and powers of oratory served him well. He saw the race card as the way to obtain power. It still is.
Today, a nasty little turd is floating about in our polluted waters. It has many names; one sticks out more than the others. A public schoolboy, posing as “one of the lads”; someone who thought it was funny to hiss at Jewish boys just after the second world war; someone who was given £5m to keep himself safe; someone who got German citizenship legally for his sons (his ex-wife is German) so Brexit disadvantages don’t inconvenience those close to him. There is a widespread fear that Farage (AKA the Odious Niggle) could succeed to the leadership; the kingdom is teetering on the brink of annihilation. But it’s not too late. After all, it is not the lie that passeth through the mind but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it that doth the hurt. (Thanks, Francis Bacon.) While the bad guys seem to be winning everywhere, I’m not giving up – and neither should you.
Exhausted by but addicted to doomscrolling, sliding from one terrifying headline to another, it’s easy to forget we are all in the same unsteady boat, north or south, young or old, lower, middle and even upper class, ignoring the culprits hiding in plain sight. It’s not the foreigners, legal or illegal, who are pissing on us; it’s the billionaires who own the media and the internet and can pay the debts of the political parties they want to control, and fuck the rest of us. Well, I’m not putting up with it any longer. And neither need you. Let’s have a laugh. It’s the antidote (and all the ammunition) we need to those arseholes who forget that Britain was great before they were born – we can see right through them.
Never forget that laughter is a good medicine, ridicule and satire can change minds, and there’s always sex. Mind you, it’s a while since I enjoyed the full-throated variety, but I know it’s out there.
I refuse to be cut off from the wealth of possibilities that Britain and Ireland offer. Let’s live, have fun, learn new tastes, new words, new mastications. Build bridges, cross chasms. And before we go to the moon again, let’s reap the benefits strangers in our midst offer. It’s not their fault that things are tough. It’s ours. This is my middle finger to naysayers, Nigel Farage and everyone who says “whatever”. It’s time to be Great Britain again – or at least Better Britain. Steady the Buffs and onwards!
This is an edited extract from Miriam’s Full English by Miriam Margolyes, published by John Murray on 3 September at £25. To support the Guardian, order your copy from guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
Margolyes will discuss her book when she heads out on a UK tour on 1 September; go to fane.co.uk for tickets.