I’m not as big a soccer fan as people might imagine, being British.
Every empire has to get sucked down the drain. As a British person, I know how it feels.
I don’t feel the cold. It’s my British blood!
Trade allegedly does not foster growth because when it begins, a flood of imports of factory origin destroys the handicraft manufacturing of the less developed country: the models for this are the effects of British exports of textiles and of iron in India and Chile in the first half of the nineteenth century.
I think British audiences are accustomed to the ‘boo’ factor and pantomimes.
Let everyone leave all the guns – British guns and Irish guns – outside the door.
British and American women have very different styles and a different way of living.
My family come from Cyprus. Both my father and my grandfather worked on the British bases there, and as the British government granted independence to Cyprus, they granted British passports to those who worked with them.
There’s a tradition in British intellectual life of mocking any non-political force that gets involved in politics, especially within the sphere of the arts and the theatre.
The United States dollar took another pounding on German, French and British exchanges this morning, hitting the lowest point ever known in West Germany.
When I fly British Airways, I can’t help but read the free Daily Mail, which makes me glad I am leaving the country.
‘What if?’ history is a tricky game, but there is no doubt that the senior planners of D-Day – including Eisenhower and the British general Bernard Montgomery – believed that the Double Cross operation had played a pivotal role in the victory.
However, I began to submit poems to British magazines, and some were accepted. It was a great moment to see my first poems published. It felt like entering a tradition.
I’m a big fan of ‘The Office’, both the British and the American versions.
Americans are a lot more open, of course. There’s something more declamatory in the way you express emotions. It’s a stereotype but it’s true. British people can appear repressed in expressing emotions. Not very good at self-evaluating, or affirming situations, touching, anything like that.
That was after Napoleon died because there is still a controversy as to whether Napoleon was poisoned with arsenic. And the French say the British did it and the British say the French did it, but he died before the test for arsenic was available.
I don’t have doctrinaire views about how we should relate to Asia. But novelists reflect the world they live in, and that world propels you, to some extent. I’m a creature of the British Empire, and of the period of transition from the Empire.
The whole nuclear-arms-control and non-proliferation policy of the nuclear powers is a fraud: The Americans could not prevent the Soviets from replicating their weaponry, and then could not object when the British did the same.
Political elites look increasingly interchangeable: Blair, Brown, and Cameron have all tried to provide cover for the surrender of sovereignty to foreign investors with invocations of ‘British’ values, and, more opportunistically, anti-immigrant rhetoric.
In British culture, redheads get teased at school. But I’ve grown up enough to realize I love my hair.
It had always been a British preoccupation to hold this mile record.
If pressed, I would say I feel British. It’s where I grew up and where I choose to live, the culture that I love, but I feel perfectly at home in America, I don’t feel like a tourist or anything.
I do identify as a Muslim and I do identify as a Bangladeshi girl, I identify as British, as well, and a woman and I’m a woman of colour, and why am I ashamed of that? And I used to not want to talk about it. But that is me.
It’s my view that human dignity – an attribute which for years has been taken by the Left in British politics – resides in fact in Tory values of independence, individuality and self determination.
British people are surprised that I’m British!
British actors behave like Europeans; they are also extremely well trained.
My British mum met my American dad when she was on holiday in the United States when she was 19. She kinda never looked back. I was born in the United States, raised in Montana and London.
World War II had been such a tremendous success story for this country that the political and military leadership began to assume that they would prevail simply because of who they were. We were like the British at the turn of the 19th century.
I went being unemployed for three years to being the lead in a British feature in the days when we only made two a year, 1990. It was ridiculous really.
Black history is a series of missing chapters from British history. I’m trying to put those bits back in.
If I’m researching something strange and rococo, I’ll go to the London Library or the British Library and look it up in books.
In film, it’s very important to not allow yourself to get sentimental, which, being British, I try to avoid. People sometimes regard sentimentality as emotion. It is not. Sentimentality is unearned emotion.
Actually, the British boarding school experience turns out to be not that exotic.
I think that British girls have a very eclectic and unique style.
I’m really inspired by British style, like Kate Moss and Sienna Miller.
The reality of life in Northern Ireland is that if you were Protestant, you learned British history, and if you were Catholic, you learned Irish history in school.
So the books have a greater appeal to a British audience, but that hasn’t stopped them making best-seller lists in places like Brazil, Japan and at least a dozen other countries.
I think there’s always been a traditionally apocalyptic side to British science fiction, from H.G. Wells onwards. I mean, most of Wells’ stories are potentially apocalyptic in some sense or another.
I did some British TV and bits and bobs here and there. I’ve been lucky.
I’m a novelist from the Haisla and Heiltsuk First Nations of British Columbia, both small coastal reserves hugging the rugged shores of the west coast.
You know, I think British comedy is very smart comedy. You don’t get too much dumb comedy over here. Or at least I haven’t seen it. If I’m wrong about that, I apologize to all the dumb comedy makers over here.
American audiences tend to underappreciate the British, but 240 years ago they were us: They were the most powerful nation on Earth. Their mercantile empire spanned the planet. They had the most potent and experienced army and navy the world had ever seen.
If I were to pick a favorite SummerSlam match of all time, there’s one iconic match that comes to mind: SummerSlam 1992, Bret Hart vs. The British Bulldog at Wembley Stadium in front of more than 80,000 people.
I spent 34 months on the battleship Alabama, South Dakota-class. I was a gun captain. First we went to Russia for about 11 months with the British convoys. Then we were up in Norway and Scandinavia.
When I was in England doing Romeo and Juliet as a child star, I was interviewed by the British press, who are even more vicious and cruel than the Americans. So I have been extremely guarded ever since.
The public must suffer untold pangs from the stiffness, the deliberate stifling of emotion, on the part of many British actors.
In dealing with the China problem, the British and American side, which had particularly strong interests in China, should have based its judgments about the origins of the problem on direct observation of the actual circumstances at the time.
The real problem at the moment is that the banks – because of their existing culture, which is frankly anti-business, obsession with short-term trading profits, not focusing on the long term – are throttling the recovery of British industry.
In Britain, they have a lot of laws to protect you, and we enforce them very strongly so that our children can stay private figures, and the British press leave us alone, which is great. It means we can go on the Tube into the centre of London because it’s quicker and more fun for the kids. We can do normal things.
I think Americans still can’t help but respond to the natural authority of this voice. Deep down they long to be told what to do by a British accent. That’s why so many infomercials have British people.
We cannot, with good conscience, expect the British to set up an orderly schedule for the liberation of India before we have decided for ourselves to make all who live in America free.
London is the financial capital of Europe, a great platform to America and Asia. I love the fact that in British culture you can be whoever you want, and people don’t even look at you. I don’t feel that in Paris or Milan.
Science fiction has always been a means for political comment. H.G. Wells’ ‘The War of the Worlds’ wasn’t about a Martian invasion – it was a critique of British colonialism, and… ‘The Time Machine’ is really an indictment of the British class system.
American actors are all muscular, tanned, white teeth and they have this indestructible confidence. We British are all… Dare I say it? Pessimistic.
I’ve always worked on the fringe of the British press establishment, carving out this niche for myself.
I recently finished a job, an HBO movie ‘Getting On,’ a very dark comedy. It comes from a British series of the same name. In this role I have no hair, no make up and no nails. I play a very small role; she is not over the top and sassy.
