A is for Anglophile #AtoZChallenge
Welcome to my first ever A to Z Challenge post. As I announced in my theme reveal, I plan to publish 26 posts in April about the UK and Ireland.
Way back when I started British Isles Friday, I thought about calling it Anglophile Friday. Someone pointed out how limiting that would be. Anglophile means “lover of England.” That rather leaves out the rest of the UK and Ireland.
In my very first British Isles Friday post, I explained the geography and terms used to describe the islands of Great Britain and Ireland and the political entities on them.
I’ve had many occasions to be grateful that I used the more expanded term:
- when Heather visited Cardiff, Wales, including the Doctor Who Experience
- when Jackie shared photos from several trips to Ireland and the UK
- when I learned about the Scottish Independence referendum
I’ve recently learned that the term “British Isles” isn’t quite as inclusive as I hoped. The Republic of Ireland refuses to use that term in any government document because the term invokes a superiority/inferiority complex — the bigger island of Great Britain lording it over the smaller island of Ireland.
Some folks argue for the term “Atlantic Archipelago,” but I think that’s way too Euro-centric. There are many other archipelagos in the Atlantic, including:
- The Bahamas, east of Florida and Cuba
- Cabo Verde, west of the Cape Verde Peninsula in West Africa
- The Canary Islands, west of Morocco
“British Isles” remains the most used term, so I’ll probably stick to that for my Friday event, but I’m starting to use “The UK and Ireland” more when I talk about it. That has a less poetic ring, for me, but has the advantage of accuracy.
I still identify as an Anglophile even though the superiority complex within the British Isles is only the beginning of that story. I learned from Sugar in the Blood by Andrea Stuart how that superiority complex was inherited by the US via Barbados and continues, to this day, to impact our ability to let go of racism and live up to the highest American ideals.
I was relieved to discover that Nelson Mandela also identified as an Anglophile in his autobiography, The Long Walk to Freedom:
I confess to be something of an Anglophile. When I thought of Western democracy and freedom, I thought of the British parliamentary system. In so many ways, the very model of the gentleman for me was an Englishman….While I abhorred the notion of British imperialism, I never rejected the trappings of British style and manners. p. 302
Love is complicated. I can live with a complicated relationship when the positives includes tweeds and black umbrellas, stately homes and picturesque ruins, amazing museums and great literature. My A to Z posts in April will cover the things I love about the UK and Ireland.
For everyone who is celebrating spring today or wishing for it, here’s a video of an actor with a beautiful voice and a British accent reading my favorite poem by William Wordsworth:
That is my favorite poem as well
I look forward to traveling with you across the pond this month.
My theme will be Boston: https://bit.ly/2GnW0qZ
That’s quite informative! I’ve always thought that the term United Kingdom included Ireland as well.
And I’ve been smitten by Wordsworth ever since I’d read Daffodils back in school
I appreciate you trying to be as accurate as possible. As an adult I enjoy the poem but as a child it was forced down our throats to memory!
Well, I also use ‘The British Isles’ and I never knew it was a ‘questionable’ term.
The world is so complicated….
Interesting start to the A-Z Challenge!
Donna B McNicol, author & traveler
Romance & Mystery…writing my life
A-Z Flash Fiction Tales: http://dbmcnicol.blogspot.com
A-Z of Goldendoodles: http://ourprimeyears.blogspot.com
fun theme. i spent 6 weeks in ireland back in 1998 studying at trinity college in dublin. visited belfast for a weekend and london for a weekend while i was there.
hi Joy, you need a clearly visible warning above the video that the poem reading is BBC content. In Britain many people no longer watch television and so do not pay a BBC license fee as they do not watch live TV/BBC content. Providers may be liable for the £1000 fine to individuals for whom such content is played unknowingly. Luckily I spotted it just in time so no worries for me but if the BBC label is hidden from view when hitting that play button it would be a problem. Sorry I know you’re busy but I’m sure you don’t need that kind of problem.
Interesting post but I’m confused as the Atlantic Ocean is somewhere over near Iceland/Greenland and we’re in the North Sea not the ocean. I’ll have to dig out my atlas in case I’m in error but our sea’s not as deep as the ocean. I s’pose the seabed might have fallen in with all the drilling and I’m a bit out of touch and the internet is full of hoax information and so are some books with all the self-publishing and so on and vanity publishing even before that. And I just realised that was an April 1st posting so it’s gotta be a joke.
I embedded the BBC content from the BBC using their embed tool. I know there are many things that they don’t share, but apparently they are happy for everyone to see this poem.
Wikipedia says that Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean. The North Sea is a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean. Of course, I just looked all that up. I’m quite clueless about the geography of oceans since I live about as far as one can get from one.
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