How Britain Became a Cultural Colossus

The secret to the nation's status as a creative superpower lies not in stability and peace but a past dominated by invasion, disruption and war

- By James Hawes. Photographs by Getty Images, Alamy, Rex Features, Bridgeman and Norfolk Museums

Just over a century ago, people across the globe had an obvious reason to be interested in the books we on these islands wrote, the pictures we painted, the buildings we built, the clothes we wore and the whole unique (sometimes, to others, rather strange) way we thought and did things. After all, one way or another, we ruled over almost a quarter of humanity.

Even the mighty Americans still copied us: during the First World War, Ernest Hemingway got his tailor to subtly tweak his uniform so that he looked more like one of our Guards officers; F Scott Fitzgerald's immortal anti-hero from 1925, Jay Gatsby, tries vainly to make his mysterious New Money socially acceptable by speaking in a bizarrely “British” way.

Well, all that's gone. Most of Ireland left us in 1922, and the landslide of the empire came swiftly after the Second World War. We now rule nobody but ourselves, and even who exactly we are is up for grabs (will we Scots and English call ourselves us for much longer?).

Imagine if you were a Martian, looking down at the world today and knowing that Earth's nations all have different cultures. You might assume that what went on among creative folk on this medium-sized set of islands off the northwest coast of Europe would be no more interesting to peoples across the rest of the world than what writers, artists, architects and suchlike were up to in, say, France or Spain.