The Secret People

One of my favourite poems is The Secret People by G K Chesterton. The first lines are –
“Smile at us, pay us, pass us but do not quite forget
For we are the people of England and we have not spoken yet.”

The eclectic, bizarre and magnificent opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics suggests that we have begun to clear our throats and find our voice.

We could never emulate Beijing. That sort of massed precision is simply not British. We are a quirky people and often difficult to understand. I am born and bred English and there were parts of the ceremony that passed over my head but other generations got things that I did not understand. Danny Boyle could never hope to satisfy everybody but he gave something to everyone. It may not be judged to have been the best ceremony in the history of the modern games – who is to judge what is best? – but it was unique; it was phantasmagorical and, essentially, British. What other Head of State would have agreed to a spoof parachute arrival at the age of 86 and then kept it a secret from the tabloid press and even her own family?

We were all inundated with prophesies of gloom prior to the Games – security would be non-existent thanks to G4S; the road network would end in gridlock; the Tube would collapse under the weight of passengers; queues would be miles long at the Olympic venues once you had waited four hours in the immigration hall at Heathrow and businesses would go down the drains. It was a typically British way of rubbishing ourselves. We are allowed to do that but any outsider should think long and hard before he begins to join in the criticism as Mitt Romney has found to his cost.

Agincourt, Trafalgar, Waterloo, Dunkirk, Battle of Britain and London 2012.
“We are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us but do not quite forget.”