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David's Mental Meanderings
12th November 2002
Great Britons - Part 1


The British love history programmes on television. In the US there is the History Channel; in the UK, the BBC. The latest primetime offering here is Great Britons. It is based upon a survey done last year that resulted in a list of the top 100 British people of all time. The BBC website says, "The definition of a 'Great Briton' for the purposes of the nominations was: anyone who was born in the British Isles, including Ireland; or anyone who lived in the British Isles, including Ireland, and who has played a significant part in the life of the British Isles."

The initial programme counted down from 100 to 11. It proved that even though the British love history programmes, they have very little sense of history itself. At least 61 of the top 100 are alive or lived in the 20th century. Two thousand years from which to draw and 3/5ths were born in the last 150 years. And apparently the definition of "great" has nothing to do with good, as it includes the terrorist Guy Fawkes.

You might be surprised at who didn't make the top 100. One group is completely unrepresented. There is not a single saint. There is no mention of Britain's first great historian, the Venerable Bede. Nobody rated it's greatest missionaries: Patrick the Enlightener of Ireland; Columba, who led the conversion of all of northern Scotland; Ninian, who did the same in southern Scotland; Aidan, who converted the Angles; or Dyfrig, who trained the army of preachers bringing salvation to the west of Britain (including St David, who would later become the patron saint of Wales).

Here are a few others off the top of my head who have lived in the British Isles, have been significant for good or evil, and didn't get a mention:

Constantine the Great
William the Conqueror
Cardinal Wolsey
Simon de Montfort
C S Lewis
John Milton
Robert Browning
John Keats
William Wordsworth
Not a single saint
John Knox
William Harvey
Karl Marx

The most amazing thing about the list is not even who made it and who didn't, but the rankings. At #87, Sex Pistols front man Johnny Rotten ranked ahead of Tim Berners-Lee (the real inventor of the Internet, Mr. Gore), Edward I, Henry II, and Field Marshall Viscount Montgomery of Alamein. He came in right below U2 lead singer Bono. Edward Jenner, who discovered the small pox vaccine and the principle of vaccination generally, comes in ahead of literary greats Geoffrey Chaucer and JK Rowling (and surely the Harry Potter books should be within two places of the Canterbury Tales). The British public were able to discern that as important as the prevention of deadly epidemics might be, it isn't as important as the music of Robbie Williams, the charity rock concert organised by Bob Geldof, or the occult writings of Aleister Crowley.

Even Crowley doesn't hold séance, or even a candle, to Charlie Chaplin, who pips everyone from the current Prime Minister (#67) to Henry V (#72). I know you must find it difficult to imagine who could be ahead of the Little Tramp (Chaplin, not Princess Diana), but Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury also prances ahead of our lowest ranked Beatle, George Harrison and our highest ranked actress, Julie Andrews. The name of the Scotsman who edges out Mercury will ring a Bell as the namesake for regional telephone companies across America. Yet his contribution to British life ranks well below another effeminate singer known as much for his heroin addiction as his Culture Club.

Boy George outranks, among others, (I see the looks of incredulity beginning to form on your faces) Sir William Wallace, Sir Francis Drake, John Wesley, and King Arthur. But even at #46 he is nowhere close to the proto-type of androgynous rock, David Bowie, who at #29 leaps ahead of Britain's first great queen, Boudicca, it's last great king, Henry VIII, and it's greatest novelist, Charles Dickens. Also left behind are the inventors of the jet engine and the television.

Britons clearly believe that the performing artists are amongst the most important Britons ever. Rated even higher than our next Beatle, Sir Paul McCartney, actor Michael Crawford (star of the 70s Brit-com Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em and the title character in the Phantom of the Opera) has also had more of an impact on British civilization than either Queen Victoria or her great-great-granddaughter HM the Queen, Alexander Fleming and that fuzzy green stuff he found in his Petri dish, Michael Faraday and all those little electrons running through wires, William Tyndale and his English Bible, or William Wilberforce and the abolition of slavery.

Of the remaining six below the top ten, I agree that all of them could make the top 100 without causing the mandibles of sane people to detach from their skulls and relocate to carpet, linoleum, or hard wood below. However, as valuable as the Scouting movement may be (as the Eagle scouts on my mailing list will attest), I have trouble with Lord Baden-Powell ranking above Margaret Thatcher, the Duke of Wellington, and King Alfred the Great.

I don't usually do two-part Meanderings. However, when it comes to the choice of the top ten Britons of all time, I agree with some but others will have me raving like a madman. Stay tuned to find out why.

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